1 of 2
Photograph by Katherine Bish
2 of 2
There aren't many fairy tales left in modern marriage. It’s too hard to figure out the plot. And casting’s a nightmare—who’s the prince, and who’s the princess? We can’t even manage a fable; nobody can agree on the moral of the story.
Martin and Mae Duggan say the man should lead and the woman should be his helpmeet. Andy Trivers says his marriage works because his wife, Kellie, “has a lot of male in her and I actually have a lot of female, and that makes us close.” Lawyers Sam and Susan Hais live peacefully, saving argument for the courtroom; archaeologists Michael and Deborah Cosmopoulos push each other into debate just for the fun of it.
Howard and Vickie Denson pack their life with shared passions— business, travel, church, art and jazz—and the Triverses can’t even remember to make dinner reservations. Terry Crow and Thomas Peters compartmentalize for efficiency, Terry practicing law while Tom stays home with their small children; the Haises shared child care 50-50, and chores are done by whoever is available.
Yet all six pairs are widely known to be “happily married,” the kind of couple you enjoy being around because there’s no covert sniping, no weary put-upon sighs, just ease and a quiet, continuing delight in each other’s company. The rest of us warm ourselves in their presence, wondering how—in an era without roles and rules, let alone magic spells and ivory towers—they do it.
Quiet Courtesy
Sam Hais was 31, a state-court judge. Susan Steinberg was 30, a lawyer arguing a case in his courtroom, and she knocked him off his feet. He asked her out in November, proposed in January.
Easygoing and entirely accepting, he was unlike any man Susan had ever known—and, at first, it threw her.
“You were used to men who were controlling,” Sam reminds his wife, “and you expected me to say, ‘Now we are going to do this.’ But I grew up with an older sister who didn’t suffer the foolishness of little kids, and I learned quickly to develop a little flexibility when it came to the female personality.”
Susan learned quickly to be glad of it.
“I didn’t want to stay at home; I wanted to be a lawyer—work when I needed to work and study when I needed to study,” she says. “Sam was always kindly, not spoiled. His parents lived in town; I remember saying, ‘Oh, do they fix you dinner and do your laundry?’ And he said, ‘Oh, no. I kind of take care of them.’ They were Old World, from Romania, and Sam had the kind of courtesy you don’t see often.”
The Haises married in 1979, and their first daughter was born 11 months later. “There she was,” Susan recalls, “and she was a handful!”
“Yeah, she was great,” Sam says. “She’s in Bologna now, studying international relations.” Their second daughter left for college three years ago, but Sam and Susan still eat next to each other because they can’t bear to sit in the girls’ places. “Dinner was a fun time for us,” explains Susan. “At the beginning, they used to wait for me to cook—well, that didn’t work so well, because I was always late. I remember Sam’s first experiments with cayenne pepper—the kids looked at me like, ‘What did Daddy do?’ and I just shrugged back.
“He was always the first one in the carpool pickup line,” she adds. “He would take a break from court, pick the kids up and stop for chocolate-chip cookies—I’d wonder why they weren’t hungry at dinner.”
Sam says he felt a little squeamish at first, telling people why he’d scheduled a break in court around 3—“but the world caught up. Soon lawyers were telling me they had to pick up their kids, too.”
“He took them to all their sports practices,” Susan adds.
“That was the greatest blessing,” he says. “Field hockey was 25 miles away from home in rush-hour traffic, so we had lots of time to talk. But Susan was there for the kids, too. I’ve never met anyone who has her energy. She wouldn’t even start the work she’d brought home until the kids were asleep, and then she’d work until midnight or 2 a.m. and get up at 5:20 a.m. to run.”
Both raised Jewish, the Haises share the same values and politics. Their differences lie in temperament: Sam’s the contemplative one, Susan decisive and energetic. “He moves at his own pace,” she says with a smile. “He has this really wonderful attitude: It’ll all work out; nothing is that important.” She hesitates then grins. “The only thing I can think of that’s irritating about him is something he has no control over—his snoring.”
“You’re going to tell the world I snore?” His amusement is gentle—these two don’t even tease rough. “Civility,” Sam says a moment later, “is a habit just like anything else.”
Of course, the Haises haven’t had much to fight about—no hovering in-laws or money worries, no illnesses or crises. They’re grateful rather than smug—in fact, they make a practice of it, because they have spent their professional lives listening to painful stories of divorce. “The reasons you hear about are not really the causes,” Sam remarks. “Infidelity, drinking, gambling—these are the effects.”
“A lot of people have problems with control,” Susan interjects.
“And that is driven by fear,” Sam continues. “People are afraid of losing their grip; they’re afraid of being swept along in the tide. They want to be able to call the shots. It presents sometimes as rudeness—they push their way through things. You have to trust the other person to make his or her interests subordinate to yours. And if you both do that, it works out beautifully.”
Family Values
Terry Crow and Tom Peters met on a blind date, set up by a mutual friend. “We talked until 3 a.m.,” Tom recalls. “We even talked about both of us wanting kids. It was very important to us to be able to help a child who wouldn’t otherwise have a great home. And we both thought one of us should be at home. We both had a parent home with us 24/7.”
Tom had finished his Ph.D. and was doing prostate-cancer research at Washington University; he could put his career on hold more easily than Terry, who was the founding president of Edward Jones Trust Co.
“I came out to one of the partners the minute he offered me the job,” Terry says. “I said, ‘You are hiring me to start a company, and your brokers have to believe in me. If me being a gay man is going to affect that, you can take the offer back right now.’ The partner said, ‘Well I didn’t expect to hear that today.’ Then he said, ‘If you don’t lie to me about that, you won’t lie to me about anything else.’”
When Terry and Tom adopted William (now 6), the Edward Jones partners threw a baby shower for them. So did their gay friends—lavish and brilliantly improvised, because none of them had ever been to a baby shower. (When it came time to fly to Guatemala to adopt Grace, now 2, the couple insisted on keeping things low-key.)
Terry grew up in Farber, Mo., a town of 472, and Tom in suburban Chicago. Both families were close, loving, near-poor. Both boys won scholarships. “We were used to working hard and succeeding,” Tom says. “That’s why it was so hard when Terry lost the election.” He’d run for the Missouri House of Representatives in a campaign so high-minded, so free of slurs or stunts, it was almost quaint. “We went door-knocking and only had two people say, ‘I can’t vote for you; I just don’t think that lifestyle is right,’” Terry says with relief.
“And you have to expect that,” Tom points out. “You are infringing on their world.”
When Tom’s out with the kids at the zoo or playground, he hears a lot of “Your wife is so lucky.” Strangers’ presumptions aside, he and Terry do feel lucky: They bought their big white house from the wife of Washington University’s chancellor, and their new neighbors all came over to welcome them. Their families’ only complaint is wanting more time with Grace and William.
As for Terry and Tom, “we disagree, but we don’t fight,” says Tom.
“Most therapists would say we don’t fight enough,” Terry remarks.
“We don’t bury anything, though.”
For Tom, what holds the relationship together is “undying trust. I know what Terry’s priorities are. He makes them clear every day.” He pauses. “You know how, when you’re with someone for a long time, a certain part of them becomes part of you? Terry thinks of others before he thinks of himself. He’s gotten me involved in the Presbyterian church, Doorways, the Human Rights Campaign, Food Outreach ... That spiritual, loving part of him has become part of me, too.”
Terry waves the praise aside: “Tom is the glue that holds everything in our family together. I tend to always keep moving to something else. He’s always behind the scenes making everything happen.”
Terry now practices law at Crow, Takacs & Texier; his goal is to be home by 6 p.m. for dinner, play and 8 p.m. storytime (at the moment, Gerald the Giraffe).
“Gracie, that’s not a toy,” Tom says swiftly, seeing her starfish hands reach for an unlit candle. She abandons her plans and clambers up, smooshing into the chair beside him with a delighted “Dad-dy!”
“She had venison for the holidays and loved it,” says Terry, awed. He shares a comfort-food palate with William—chicken tenders and hot dogs, chips, M&Ms and regular scoldings from health-conscious Tom.
They love their life. “I was never into the bar crowd,” Terry says, “or petty gossip. Our big concern now is my dad’s health, and my nephew, who has cancer, so we spend more time in Farber. If this is the hand you are dealt, this is what you do.”
“I couldn’t have dealt with a narcissist,” Tom says suddenly. “So many people are caught up on the surface. There is no doubt in my mind that I met a very handsome and interesting person, but the bottom line is, we are together forever. Our bond goes deep. People spend so much time making sure their hair looks OK.”
“Yeah, we gave up on that,” Terry says wryly.
“There’s no doubt a lot of luck’s involved in any relationship,” he adds, “but I have the utmost respect for the values my parents raised me with: Do unto others, work hard, don’t expect anything from others if you’re not willing to do it yourself. Rely on your family. Take care of your family.”
Hanging Out
Kellie Burke first ran into Andy Trivers at the Saint Louis Art Fair in September 1994. “I thought, ‘Oh, God,’” she recalls. “I knew he was quite the player, and I was so not interested. I’m Southern, and I had just—after a very traumatic relationship—gotten my sass back.”
Andy saw her again, six months later, in the Cardwell’s bar, and a mutual friend said, “Oh, that’s Kellie Burke. You don’t want to mess with her—she’s trouble.” Andy immediately sat down next to her. “I figured this was not going to be your regular girl,” he says. “I was going to have to pay attention.” After a divorce and 10 years single, he was ready.
“She told me she didn’t write her number on napkins,” Andy remembers, “so I took out my card. She gave me her work number and told me to tell her secretary I was number six.” She wasn’t kidding.
Asked whether there was a turning point in their courtship, Andy shrugs: “Not really.”
“There were two,” Kellie says firmly. “The first was when I let him know I was dating someone else—I was down to two by then—and he walked out. He didn’t want to be on a list. The second was when he was designing this place—”
“This was going to be my bachelor pad!”
“—and he was really tired and it just slipped out, he said, ‘This could be Jodie’s room.’ Jodie is my daughter.”
Soon their Saturday night dates were trips to Home Depot. “Andy’s in charge of how everything looks—he’s the self-appointed king of taste—and I’m in charge of electrical equipment,” Kellie drawls. Then she turns serious. “When I was getting divorced, my therapist said, ‘You have really tried to make these relationships work. Someday you will find somebody you just naturally connect with, and you won’t have to stretch. But I think it’s going to be a man with a highly developed feminine side.’ I remember thinking, ‘What man like that am I not going to steamroll over?’”
Then she met Andy. “He knew how to get places; he could give me directions,” she says. “I didn’t always have to know where I was and how I got there.” She found herself relaxing. “I’m not as tough as I used to be,” she says. “Andy’s made me more aware of other people’s feelings.”
He says she’s made him more aware of feelings, period. “When I was single, sex was pretty ungratifying,” he admits. “It was something to do, something to make you feel connected, but you fundamentally weren’t. The more you’re with someone, the more satisfying sex becomes, because you feel the emotion that goes with it.”
“When we started out, it wasn’t this big passionate sex thing at all,” Kellie agrees cheerfully. “Over the years we have grown into a really fulfilling sex life. In my other marriages, we didn’t grow into anything.
“I do regress sometimes,” she admits impulsively. “I’ll get irritated with Andy about table manners, and then I’ll catch myself and think, ‘Good grief, lighten up. Life’s short.’” She glances at her husband. “And now he’s pissed that I brought up table manners!” She reaches down to pet Sadie, their “badass border collie,” who’s eyeing the fudge on the cocktail table. Sadie’s one of their shared joys.
“We spend a lot of time just hanging out, taking Sadie to the Loop, going for a pack walk,” Kellie says. “We don’t take things so seriously. When we travel, we just walk, explore and snoop, or we get on our bikes and roam around, like when we were kids.”
“You need someone you can fall back on,” says Andy, “who will accept you no matter what.” He pauses. “I do think most good relationships are really luck.”
“Nah,” says Kellie. “I think the universe has something to do with it.”
Faith as an Anchor
In the wedding portrait, lovely Mae Duggan stands beside her new husband at the altar, gazing down demurely.
“Martin was so disgusted that I cried during the wedding,” she confides now.
“I figured she was crying because she was marrying me!”
“I was crying because I had to learn to cook real fast.”
At 16, Mae Mosher went to visit Geraldine Duggan, her dear friend at St. Joseph’s Academy. Every half hour, Geraldine’s 15-year-old brother—who worked at an ice-cream parlor and had heard about the most popular girl in his sister’s class—came in with sundaes and banana splits.
“Who’s this round-headed kid who keeps bringing the ice cream?” Mae remembers asking Geraldine.
By her senior year, Martin had scratched up enough money to ask Mae for a date. He took her to the Muny Opera, then timidly asked whether she’d like to go again. “She said—and this was what led me to ask her to marry me years later—‘Yes, but next time don’t get such expensive seats.’”
Martin went off to college in San Antonio, but, the next summer, he ran into Mae at a political lecture at Kiel Auditorium. “I said the first thing that came into my mind,” Mae recalls. “‘Come up sometime and see my mother’s new wallpaper.’” Her thrifty German mother had used remnants: a red-and-black Chinese design for the walls and yellow-and-purple plaid for the ceiling. “I figured it was my civic duty to ask her to marry me and get her out of there,” says Martin, who popped the question at a family New Year’s Eve party in 1941. He was working at the St. Louis Globe-Democrat and finishing college at night.
“I could see this coming before the party,” Mae recalls, “and I thought, ‘I’ve got to make up my mind.’ I went to church three days in a row: I prayed and prayed and mentally reviewed his resume. Martin was a take-charge guy. His sister had told me he fixed breakfast for them and took care of his little brother. I knew if I married Martin, I’d have no worries for the rest of my life—and it’s been true. I’m completely relaxed.”
Martin found Mae “beautiful, very peppy, fun, full of the thrill of living, ahead of the curve on everything.” Most important, they shared a strong Catholic faith that they counted on to anchor their marriage.
“You do have to adjust,” Mae says. “When we first married, I was kind of independent. But when you love a person—”
“You have always enjoyed independence, to this day,” Martin reminds her briskly. (The two speak interchangeably, completing each other’s thoughts without ever interrupting.)
“Martin lets me do anything I want,” Mae concedes. “He was always perfectly considerate; if he’s going to be five minutes late, he calls. Selfishness hurts a marriage.”
“When you are newlyweds, with all the passion and romance, you can’t imagine that you could love somebody more at an older age, when certain opportunities don’t present themselves or you are combating some illness,” Martin says, “but I can truthfully say I love Mae more now, because we have had 65 years to grow in appreciation of one another.”
They firmly believe in the traditional roles, with the woman nurturing and the man providing and protecting.
“Mae really raised our kids,” says Martin, who wound up an editor at the Globe. “I worked nights and, for many years, every Sunday and holiday. One year our oldest, who’s a jokester, said, ‘Hey, Dad, it’s Christmas—how come you’re home?’”
The Duggans’ second son, Tom, died at 33. He was born with brain damage and had been in and out of hospitals for years. “Most people didn’t suspect that Mae had a care in the world,” says Martin, “because she maintained that lighthearted, lovable—”
“Goofy,” she interjects.
“—personality.”
“That’s when it’s important to have each other,” she says.
Later, she confides that “Martin is very loving. Every hour, he says, ‘I love you’ and gives me big kisses. You have to show your love. Sex is a gift from God, and sexual enjoyment must be unselfish.” The corners of her lips turn up. “Martin is an Irish lover.”
“Glad to be one,” he flashes back. Then he turns serious. “Neither of us ever doubted that we could depend on the other person. She was doing what came naturally as a wife and mother. I was doing what came naturally as a husband and father.”
To this day, Mae teases Martin about his absorption in newspapers. One morning she said from across the kitchen, just to see whether she could get his attention, “Aren’t you glad you’re happily married?”
Martin had his own early frustration: “Mae’s idea of being on time used to be that, if we got there on the same day, it would be OK.”
Both mended their ways, eased toward the middle. Now their lives circle around the lives of five children, 10 grandchildren, four great-grandchildren, civic activities, Martin’s Donnybrook hosting duties on KETC (Channel 9) and daily Mass.
“Martin ‘Deadline’ Duggan sets the clock for quarter-to-six every morning,” Mae groans.
“Don’t you like it better that we’re on time now?” he asks innocently.
Shared Passions
Howard Denson saw Vickie across a crowded New York merchandise showroom and started asking people who she was. “Not to bring race into this, but there were so few black people in merchandise management, I thought, ‘Who is that person?’ And the other thing that flashed through my mind was ‘How do I get another ticket to see Lena Horne tonight?’” Vickie, 32, was enjoying single life in New York, but, she had to admit, he was handsome. She’d always hoped to meet “someone kind, someone who would not necessarily mirror me but would have similar interests—someone I could enjoy life with.”
They married, settled in St. Louis and had a baby girl. Vickie also helped raise Howard’s two daughters from a previous marriage—he’d managed to win joint custody before most judges would even consider it. Now the kids are grown and Howard and Vickie run the Black Pages directory together: He’s CEO and publisher; she’s president.
“I don’t recommend it, by the way,” Vickie says dryly. “I think sometimes there should be some breaks—‘Hi, honey, how was your day?’—but we try not to take it home with us.”
“We try to have fun,” Howard says. “We are passionate about hobbies, off-the-chart involved in art, theater, jazz. We love cruises, eating in restaurants, searching for art on vacations. And we’re passionate about humanity. I have this concept I call ‘the covenant’; it’s a black thing. Every African American exists today because someone chose life at a point when it would’ve been a whole lot easier to just go down. Every generation made sure the next was better prepared. I have a deep concern that we have shattered that covenant. For the first time, you can’t be certain that black kids are going to achieve more than their parents.”
Howard and Vickie give hours of their time to social service and urban education and reform. They also go to church together, but, Vickie says, she’s “more into the actual going, the community.” Howard shrugs: “Sometimes I think Diablo is chewing up our kids while we minister to each other behind locked doors.”
What the Densons miss most is free time. “Every now and then I feel that mother instinct—I should cook a Sunday dinner, at least,” Vickie says, “but our lives are just so busy.”
“It took me forever, but I finally convinced Superwoman to let somebody help with the cleaning,” Howard says. “I also found something I could do independently—because she’s pretty demanding—and that’s the laundry.”
“I don’t even complain anymore,” Vickie says. “I just try to get the clothes out so they are not so wrinkled.” She laughs, tossing her head back. “I was a structured person; I liked things in their place, cleanliness and order. But with children, a husband and a dog—none of whom pick up after themselves—I don’t worry so much anymore.”
Their 22-year marriage has changed Howard, too: “For a long time I thought avoiding disagreement was really important. My wife and daughters convinced me that that was completely wrong.”
“Get it out; get it over with,” Vickie murmurs in agreement.
“On the other hand, I’m the touchy-feely one,” he adds. “Vickie is stoic: Grit your teeth and get it done.”
She is also, she freely admits, “a horrible backseat driver. I drive most of the time. And when Howard does have the opportunity and I’m in the car—”
“—she’s driving,” he picks up. “I’ve learned to love being chauffeured.”
“As we’ve grown,” Vickie says, “we’ve accepted each other’s little quirks, stopped trying to change each other.” What she loves most about Howard, she says, is “his enthusiasm, his love of love.” She turns toward him. “You really do, you know how to love. You know how to show love, not just to me but to the kids and to people in general.”
“Vickie tries to play tough,” Howard says, “but, at the core, there’s this huge well of compassion. I want to change the big picture, the public policy stuff. She has a much deeper compassion on the individual level—and when all is said and done, that’s where things happen: one on one.”
