Photography by David Sacks/Getty Images
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Web Exclusive…
Happily Ever After
November 2004
Four famous couples reveal the secrets of a 50-year marriage
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Every town has at least one: the silver-haired married couple, a lifetime of
togetherness behind them, slowly strolling arm-in-arm through the fading light
of day. Younger couples, too polite to stare, sneak admiring,
affectionate—sometimes envious—glances. There are lessons to be
learned there, bits of wisdom to be shared.
In a larger sense, America has its counterparts to those lucky small-town
couples. We met them in their youth, in the first blush of fame, watched them
mature together, occasionally fretted about their well-being. Now, the sight of
them elicits warm smiles and the sense that if they could endure this long, why
not us?
Here are four such couples. What they have to say about love and marriage
and commitment is, like them, timeless.
President Jimmy Carter & Rosalynn Carter
Married: 1946
Text by Helen Thomas
Jimmy Carter and his wife, Rosalynn, sit side by side in armchairs in his
spacious office at the Carter Center in Atlanta, Georgia. They're laughing
about Carter's famous and somewhat scandalous 1976 confession to
Playboy magazine.
"Do you still have lust in your heart?" I tease.
"For Rosalynn," comes the quick response. "I compare a lot of
women with Rosalynn and so far she has come out on top."
He laughs. She laughs.
I put the same question to Rosalynn, and she replies with a mischievous
grin: "For Jimmy."
It's the fairy-tale fruition of a long-ago inscription that a young
Jimmy Carter wrote to Rosalynn on a photograph of himself in his Navy uniform:
"Darling, I love you with all my heart for all of my life."
Was it love at first sight? For Jimmy Carter, it was. His sister, the late
Ruth Carter Stapleton, was Rosalynn's good friend and arranged for the two
to have a date. As Carter tells it, they had "just one date, one
date," and that was it for him, forever. Naturally, to this day they
differ over the details, but Carter does recall that the next morning, as his
mother cooked breakfast, she asked him what he had done the night before. He
told her he went to a movie "with the woman I'm going to
marry."
They were married in 1946, within a month of his graduation from the U.S.
Naval Academy in Annapolis, Maryland. Rosalynn was just shy of 19. "I
think she just wanted to get out of Plains," her husband quips. "And
I had a good-looking uniform."
Like any other couple, they've had their ups and downs. In the
beginning, it was often due to his tendency to make important family decisions
without consulting her. For example, in 1953, Carter decided all on his own to
give up his planned career in the Navy to go home to run the family peanut
warehouse in Plains, Georgia, after his father died.
Rosalynn—for the first time in their married life enjoying life out of
reach of her domineering mother-in-law, "Miss Lillian"—cried
and argued with her husband against the move. To no avail. Carter also got into
hot water with his wife when he got up one morning, put on his Sunday suit,
and—again without even consulting Rosalynn—decided to run for the
Georgia state senate.
But as Jimmy moved into politics, the marriage slowly "evolved to a
real partnership," according to Jody Powell, Carter's White House
press secretary.
Powell dates Rosalynn's emergence from her husband's shadow to 1966,
the year of Carter's first, unsuccessful run for governor of Georgia. She
started making solo political speechmaking trips and, according to Powell,
"became more of a public partner than a private partner."
Later, as first lady at the White House, her strength and seriousness were
apparent, and she refused to be taken for granted or ignored. Her attendance at
Cabinet meetings caused a dustup when the media began to ask, "Who
appointed her?" Despite the furor, she continued to attend.
Soon she was no longer known as Mrs. Jimmy Carter. She was Rosalynn Carter,
a woman who had come into her own. At times during the 1980 campaign, she
openly clashed with her husband. One day, her deputy press spokesman Paul
Costello recalls, she told the staff she'd just had a testy strategy
session on the phone with her husband.
"I've had a bad day," she said. "I told Jimmy Carter to
go to hell and I hung up on him."
But the biggest rift in their marriage came, ironically, after they decided
to collaborate on a book they called Everything to Gain: Making the Most of
the Rest of Your Lives (University of Arkansas Press, 1995).
They laugh about it now, but the bitter disputes over the book—about
events that helped shape their lives and those of other people—almost
broke up their marriage. "It was the worst time in our lives," says
Carter. "We got so we could only communicate with each other about the
book by writing ugly letters on the computer back and forth."
What was the problem? "We couldn't agree on what happened or why it
happened or our reaction to it or how it affected other people," Carter
explains. The breach was aggravated by their different writing styles. Carter
wrote rapidly, polishing off several chapters in a short time. Rosalynn
dismissed his approach as "rough draft" and she labored over every
sentence she wrote.
What's more, Carter recalled, she wouldn't let him change a word, as
if her prose had "just come down from Mount Sinai."
"That's right," Rosalynn adds, getting in the last word.
In the end, it took editor Peter Osnos of Random House to work out a
compromise. He split up the paragraphs they could not agree on and identified
them in the margins as "R" or "J."
Asked if they had ever contemplated a divorce, Carter says, "not
seriously, no."
"Ever in your life?" I press. "Naw," he insists.
Besides, he adds, growing up in Plains, "I had never known of anyone who
was divorced. To me that was something that happened in Hollywood."
Unfortunately, the Carters have looked on sadly as divorce touched two of
their four children.
"That was very traumatic for us," says Carter, adding that both of
those sons have remarried "very happily."
"I think that marriages should be sanctified and divorce should be
rare," he continues. "One of the things that is easier to say but
difficult to do if you are madly in love is to analyze commonality and
differences between two people and be willing to accept those
differences."
Both agree they had to learn the hard way that a good marriage allows each
partner to have some breathing room. "It took us a while to learn
that," says Rosalynn.
"We know we're different," Carter adds. "When we were
first married, I was unquestionably dominant. I made the decisions. Rosalynn
went along, sometimes tearfully."
"So you were a male chauvinist," I smile.
"I was," he concedes.
"He was," Rosalynn chimes in.
It's a different story now. Carter says that he has learned not to
interfere with things that are important to his wife "and to honor
her—you know, her decisions—if they are related to things that are
important to us."
The Carters today describe themselves as "moderate Democrats."
They also are deeply religious Baptists and devoted to the Maranatha Baptist
Church, where he teaches a Bible class and even mows the lawn. Rosalynn also
has taught Sunday school and swept the floors.
They are regular volunteers with Habitat for Humanity, a nonprofit
organization that helps build or renovate houses for the needy—and the
nonprofit Carter Center continues to have a worldwide impact in promoting world
health, fighting hunger around the globe, and overseeing elections in emerging
democracies.
Carter has spoken of slowing down, but those who know him say that will be
the day. He and Rosalynn are doers and not ones to rest on their laurels.
Besides, they have promises to keep and miles to go before they sleep.
Carl & Estelle Reiner
Married: 1943
Text by Jamie Diamond
Carl: I was a young actor, she was a young scenic designer. I asked
her to dance.
Estelle: As he was walking over, I thought, Oh, tall, dark, and
handsome—how boring!
Carl: The first thing is sex, no question, but you have to like the
person you fell in love with.
Estelle: Actually, I think it was dumb luck that we turned out so
well. Because if I had really thought about it, would I marry someone whose
total earnings were $48 a week?
Carl: $47.50.
Estelle: It's hard to find out why a couple stays together.
Carl: I try to make her laugh.
Estelle: I don't think you try to make me laugh.
Carl: I do sometimes.
Estelle: I have a hard time getting to be the center of
attention.
Carl: That's true. She had a loud father and now she has a loud
husband and a son [director Rob Reiner]. But she has more wisdom, so if I want
to hear something smart I shut up, and she will say something.
Estelle: We balance each other.
Carl: A marriage goes through stages. We used to hold hands because
we wanted to. Now we hold hands so we don't fall.
Eli Wallach & Anne Jackson
Married: 1948
Text by Jamie Diamond
Eli: Finding what makes a marriage work is like finding the cure for
cancer. Who knows what works?
Anne: It's very hard to lead a normal life when you're
actors. But you either make a commitment to a marriage or you don't, and we
did.
Eli: Actually, being actors helped. We did plays that had tremendous
fights in them, and we took it all out on the stage. In one play, The Waltz
of the Toreadors, I started to choke her because I couldn't stand her.
It released all the tension. It avoided a marriage counselor and divorce
lawyers.
Anne: We had our ups and downs.
Eli: Age brings knowledge that a good relationship doesn't happen
all at once. It isn't like in the movies. You have to leave room for the
other person to grow and develop.
Anne: We've been stubborn and gotten along without having
analysis. But we've been lucky.
Jerry Stiller & Anne Meara
Married: 1954
Text by Jamie Diamond
Jerry: On our first date she asked me to pick up the check and pick
up the silverware and put it in my pocket. This was exciting. I had never met a
woman with larceny in her soul.
Anne: My roommate and I hardly had any silverware.
Jerry: Anne was attracted to me in a way I had never felt before.
Usually I'd fall in love and the rug would be pulled out. But here was Anne
saying, "I like you, and you're okay."
Anne: We were both unemployed actors. He said, "I can't
marry you. I don't have a job." And I said, "It will work
out."
Jerry: We went through many patches where we said we just can't
go on anymore, but we managed to get through.
Anne: We came from completely different backgrounds. [She's Irish
Catholic, and he's Jewish.] If we'd given up, it would have proven the
people right who said we shouldn't get married.
Jerry: We were such oddballs.
Anne: When we were first married and a conflict would arise, Jerry
would walk out of the room. But, since therapy, he makes his ideas known and,
if I have any sense at all, I'll hear what he's saying. I know now I
can never change Jerry; I can only change myself.
Photo Credits
Jimmy and Rosalynn Carter: STEVE SCHAEFER/AFP/Getty Images; Carl and
Estelle Reiner: Carlo Allegri/Getty Images; Eli Wallach and Anne Jackson: Peter
Kramer/Getty Images; Jerry Stiller and Anne Meara: Evan Agostini/Getty
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