Gerd: May I interrupt? The only reason why I stayed at her house was because she had a hidden bottle of Bacardi in the couch. I was ready to leave after 10 minutes, but then she opened up the couch, and I decided to stay.

Dina: Yes, it's true. Then later on, maybe 11 p.m., my husband comes back. He comes in the door, and he saw Gerd and he say, "Ach! Good! I'm happy you are here! So. We can talk together." We were sitting the whole night.

I didn't know before. I didn't know anything. Gerd's wife was working in the same company where my husband was an agent. This was an insurance company. And I was 21 years by this company.

So this was very sad for me. Very sad. I was so sick and so terrible, I couldn't sleep in the night anymore. It was a very hard year. Every day was a new story from him.

Gerd: They told us they are so much in love with each other that they rather would die before they would come back to us.

During that time, we help each other out. I took Dina for dancing, dinner, movie theater. She help me with my little daughter, and so on. And it worked out so perfectly good that we started thinking we would be better off without them two.

Dina and I were so close already. We were not in love. We were just close.

And we invited them two later on to come and talk to us, and we told them, "Hey, no, we finally agree with you two. You can stay together. We both get divorced, we make you no problems at all." Because we have companionship, we found out we're getting along very good, you know. And they hated that. My former wife started crying, wanted to come back to me. It was only for a couple months with them.

Dina: When they find out we want to stay together, they want to come back again. Then we say, no way anymore!

Gerd: I told them, "We can do what you do. Don't worry, we are adults, too! We are able to love."

Dina: My husband say, "I don't want a divorce. I only want to go to her three times in a week." You know what I say? "You have to look for a stupider thing than me." And I go to the divorce lawyer right away.

Gerd: Many, many times we talk about that, and we still are thankful that destiny turned that way for us.

Dina: We are married for 28 years, but together 35. But my husband and his wife, they never together. They started a little together, but the love was gone.

Gerd: Let's say, even they plundered our banking accounts and they were empty, their love also was empty.

Dina: They had nothing, we had everything. He had a house, and I an apartment.

Gerd: At that time, in Germany, we had a law of guilty or not guilty. And when you cheat on your spouse, you get absolutely nothing. You have to pay for the lawyers, you have to pay the court, you have to pay for everything, and you leave the house empty-handed. That's why we are good off, you know? We ended up with two complete houses!

Dina: At the end of December '73, we both divorced. We were already a little bit together at this time. And we find out we have a lot of things what we like together...

Gerd: Bacardi...

Dina: And we like to travel.

Gerd: I needed somebody to take care of my little daughter, you know, because my wife left me with the little girl at home. Dina felt a little guilty, because it was her husband who took my wife away. So she was so kind to come to my house and help me out with the cooking and the laundry. And after a while my little daughter started calling her Mommy. Because I had to go to work, we spent the weekends together. And we became closer and closer. And the day came when we said, "Why don't we just try to stay together for good?" And now I see it worked out perfectly.

Dina: My first husband, he did nothing. You know, he don't want to go on vacation or something. And we -- when we were together, we were every weekend away. We saw all in Europe.

Then we were in America, and we liked it so much. We like Florida. And then we had the idea we come here to buy a house. He always liked marriage. But after what I had before, I don't like this so much. But when we bought this house, then I say, you know what? It's better that we marry.

So, this was August, '80.

Gerd: That was actually the official time we got engaged. It was one o'clock a.m. But where can you get engagement rings at one o'clock in the morning? We opened the refrigerator and pulled out two cans of beer. We pulled off the rings and exchanged it.

Dina: Yes, it's true.

Gerd: We still have them. It's our official engagement rings.

Dina: So we married and we bought this house, and we were real both very happy.

Gerd: Love that grows out of something like what we have is stable and deeper than first love at first sight. Some pretty face might turn out to be garbage. Sometimes when we watch TV, beautiful girls on "Judge Judy," then they open their mouth, well, that's it. There is more than just a nice face and making love.

Why we are getting along so good is we ... I don't know how to express it in English, but maybe you get the idea ... I'm not living my life, I living her life. I try to do everything as good as possible to make her happy. If she tells me I need two pounds of potatoes, we go together and buy those two pounds of potatoes.

Dina: It's not a lie. We make everything together. He never, ever walk any place without me. Only to work.

Gerd: After all those years, we can honestly say we never fought. We just don't do that. There's no reason. We are both engaged in this marriage to make each other as comfortable as possible. And bad words, they don't work. Of course, we have different opinions once in a while.

Dina: But we say, never go in the bed before everything is clear. You know, talk. When you have a problem, talk.

Gerd: Of course we have days when we aren't agreeing about things, but before we start fighting, we shut up.

What was our nicest day we ever had together?

Dina: Nicest day? Oh, we had a lot of nice ones. I can't say.

Gerd: Maybe it was when you told me oysters would help my sex life?

Dina: Oh, shhhh...

Gerd: I can honestly say it's a lie, because the other day I ate a dozen oysters, and only nine worked. [Laughs]

Dina: You know, we are so much on vacation together. We go 11 times on a cruise. We were four times in Las Vegas, not gambling, but only look around in the nice casino. Oh I love this, it's so beautiful. Sometimes we went in a new casino, I say, "I want to know the architect who did this." It was so beautiful. We never gambled. We only walk around and enjoy life.

Gerd: Another big moment where we really appreciated to be together was -- I know it sounds like a cliché -- when we were for the very first time at the Grand Canyon. We start asking, "Who is the architect on that?" [Laughs] And we said, it couldn't be an American because if it had been American, it never would be finished! We hadn't to say anything, you know. Just arriving there, looking down in the big hole. I lay my arm around Dina's shoulder and looking at each other, and we both started crying. To be there together and see that. It was one of the moments where we really, really appreciated to be there together, because you cannot tell anybody how that feels.

Dina: That's little things and big things. You must be thankful to have each other.

Gerd: The love that was with my first wife was a very young love. It was more passionate. The second love, what we have now, was, let's say, born more out of common sense. We love each other more than we used to love our first partner. But it's in a different way. Dina: When you're young, it's a different story. It's only, "I love you, oh yeah, yeah."

Gerd: I'm coming home every night, not going to any bars, make no problems -- this is a love sign. In my younger years, I liked to drink a lot. And if I didn't have her to hold on, maybe I had forgotten to control myself. She was a big help without ever saying anything.

Dina: And smoking, too. He was so smoking, and I had a problem with bronchitis. He stopped maybe 15 years ago, and who knows, if he not stopped, he not alive anymore.

Gerd: I remember maybe 20 years ago, when we still had sex. [Laughs] We just were engaged in that action and she said, "Do you love me? Do you love me?" And I said, "What do you think I'm doing here?"

I'm trying to be funny for the reason. We do this all the time. Our life is that way. We spend nights next to each other, laughing our ass off. Sometimes we sing opera during the night.

Dina: We went to Spain and we rent a house. It had only one bedroom you know, but it's a nice house, we both singing opera all night. We can do that, you know. We can do that, and we like it. Then we laughing and happy.

Gerd: This is also something that keeps us together, you know, the jokes and laughing all the time. I really have problems to take life seriously. Believe it or not, I'm happy when it's raining. Because if I'm not happy, it's still raining. My whole life is like that, you know? I lost a leg to diabetes, and I'm happy. I never get cold feet anymore. I only need one shoe when I go shopping.

Dina: The last three years was hard time for me. When Gerd had lost ... and then the other leg started ... Then he had bypass, then kidney. He had a lot of problem and I'm only by myself with everything. Was not always easy.

Gerd: This is also big, big, big thing in our marriage, that she takes care of my handicap, without any question whatever. It is just there, every day and every day and every day. If I try to go to the refrigerator with my crutches to pick up a Coke, she's right behind me, "Sit down! I do that. I have two legs, you only have one, I do that!" And this is much more worth than say every five minutes, "I love you," which is mostly just said to say something.

And it's also 100 percent sign that she loves me because I might meet 250 people and I tell them all the same joke and she's still laughing. She doesn't have to yell at me, "I love you. I'll kick your ass, you don't believe it!"

Dina: So we are both a little older and smarter. Much, much happier than before. This was a very different life, and a much, much better life.

Gerd: We thank her ex-husband every day. Actually, every year on the divorce date, we send him a thank-you note.

Then what happened was my sister married an American, and my mother and I came to America. And I came to N.Y. and got a job at the New York Public Library part-time and transferred to New York University.

And on the first day, I go to the library for my books, I hear a noise, and I look down and there's an umbrella. I pick up the umbrella, and I see the most beautiful woman I had ever seen in my entire life. And I said, "You are the most beautiful woman I've ever seen in my entire life. I want to take you out." She said, "No, no it's impossible." So she went her way, and I went my way.

The next day, I'm going to class, and I pass an open classroom and there's that vision of loveliness that I had seen the night before. So I waited. She comes out of class, and I said, "Look, it's impossible that I could know you were in this classroom. It's fate. God had decided that we have to ..." and I persuaded her to come with me to Chock Full o' Nuts and I bought her a 25-cent cheese sandwich with cream cheese and walnut bread, and I bought her a Coke. I spent like 35 cents on her. [Laughs.] Money was no object!

She was 27, I was 19. She was half-Filipino and half-American, and she was the most stunning woman you ever saw in your life.

She said, "I can't go out with you." I said, "Why not?" She said, "I'm married." She was married to a professor. I said, "I don't care if you're married." And we started an affair that went on for the entire year. I lost my virginity. Out went the Jewish religion, out went God. Everything went down the drain, because now all I cared about was sex with this girl. It was so great that I was annoyed that for 19 years, I hadn't had sex. I've been trying to make up for it ever since.

We had the most wonderful year. I remember everything about it. I remember every moment. This was 1951 to '52. We'd walk around. She'd buy socks for her husband to show why she was late. We'd go out, to a movie occasionally. I can tell you the movies we saw. The best one was "Viva Zapata," with Marlon Brando and Anthony Quinn.

My birthday, May 27, she meets me, she said, "Aubrey, it's over." I said, "What do you mean, it's over?" She said, "He's gotten a job with the secretary of the Navy, and we're leaving for Washington." I was brokenhearted. The love of my life. Anyway, I was drafted in the Army in 1953, and guess where I'm stationed? Fort Virginia, outside of Washington.

We met in Washington that night. We went to see "Julius Caesar" with Marlon Brando and James Mason and Deborah Kerr, and we started our love affair again. I got sent to Germany during the Korean War, and every day I wrote to her, and every day she wrote to me. And when I got back, I went to Washington, she meets me in a restaurant, and I said, "I want you to leave your husband and we're going to live together, and we're going to be happy for the rest of our lives." She said, "I can't do it." I said, "What do you mean you can't do it?" She said, "I'm pregnant." She never thought she could get pregnant. She had an upturned womb or something.

So I get a grant to go to Mexico City. I wanted to be a professor of Latin American history. I walk into my class on the Mexican Revolution. And this cute little brunette says, "Hey you, you're not a Mexican, are you?" I said, "No." She said, "Come to my house tonight. We're having a Mexican fiesta. You'll learn all about Mexican customs." I go to this beautiful house. I hear music -- singing, dancing.

She was gorgeous. She was 5-foot-2, long hair, brunette, glassy eyes, cute little body, slender. She was an authority on Mexican history -- oh, brilliant woman! The first day, I was in love with her.

It was different in those days. In 1956, we didn't have the sexual revolution that we have today. Every time I went out with her, I had to have a chaperone. All the good girls were chaperoned. But what we did was, we told her mother her classes were every afternoon at the Filosofia y Letras. What the mother didn't know was that two days, we didn't have classes, and we'd go to the movies. We fooled around a lot, but no sex, because she was a virgin. And, of course, I was in love with sex, and we hadn't had sex. So at the end of the year, in December of '56, I married Maria Elena, and we were married for 39 years.

She got pregnant immediately, and nine months after we got married, there we were, father and mother. I was 25, she was 22. That was a little scary. We had no money -- just a few dollars. I got a job as a Spanish teacher in the NYC school system. My wife became a teacher as well. After 10 years, I became an assistant principal. Twenty years after that, I retired at 55, and I get a pension every month. It was wonderful, because you work six hours and 30 minutes, 180 days a year, and you've got all the time in the world at night.

So I would go out every night, every single night, 365 nights a year. She couldn't do that, because she was still a teacher. She had to prepare her classes. So I had to take other people out, and of course, some of the people were very good-looking women. And so, if they liked me and I liked them, since I'd already committed adultery at the age of 19, and I wasn't religious anymore, if you have a chance to sleep with a beautiful woman, it's very hard to say no.

I kept winning grants, and so forth. I went to NYU on a National Defense grant, and so she went to Mexico for the summer. So we were separated and I had an affair with one of the girls in my group from Connecticut. Because -- look, my wife went to Mexico, and she went on grants, and she'd be gone in Mexico for four or five months. I wasn't going to stay a virgin for four or five months.

I didn't think it was harming. Every woman I had an affair with, I told her I was never going to leave my wife. If they liked my company, they liked going to the theater, they liked going to the opera, fine, come out with me. Otherwise, I didn't care, because I had my wife at home.

She knew that I loved her and I would never abandon her, and I would never divorce her. She knew that as a fact, because that's the way I am. And she was more important than any other woman in my heart. The other women were kind of cute and nice to have sex with, but they weren't important. I never let myself fall in love with them or have a passion for them. I had passion for my wife.

My wife was brilliant. Her brain never stopped working. That's why I loved her. We'd go to see a Broadway show and she would notice things that were on that stage that would escape me. Oh, she was brilliant. We were perfect together. We loved theater, opera, the ballet, cabaret. She never stopped studying. We'd go to the theater, on a trip, and she'd have a book in her hand. All the time. We had 2,000 books all over the apartment. In the kitchen, there was no food -- just books.

My wife was not that domesticated. She said, "Aubrey when we get married, I can only be good in one room in the house. Forget the kitchen." We had sex right up to the day she died.

She was so full of life, everyone thought that our son and her were brother and sister. She was leading the conga line when she retired from the school system at the last party. She was beautiful. She was good company. I just wanted to be next to her all the time.

I know she never committed adultery, because it was against -- she was a straight-laced person. Her pride would've been hurt if she had sex with another person. And she had her opportunities. Men were coming on to her all the time. Everybody wanted to have sex with my wife. All her life, everybody loved her. Everybody was charmed by her. She was so sweet and loving and danced. She did all the Mexican folk dances. They'd make her dance at every party we went to. Oh, they loved her.

And then, one night, we went to the opening of Tito Puente's restaurant on City Island. It was an all-star gathering -- Rita Moreno, Celia Cruz, Simon and Garfunkel -- she'd started writing for Spanish newspapers, and in the nightlife she got to meet all these people. Rita Moreno became one of our closest friends, and she always says she was with us on Maria Elena's last night.

So we get home and she goes to the bathroom and vomits blood. I called 911, and they come and take her to the emergency room. They pull the curtain. She's still lucid, and she vomited again and went into a coma, and they put her on life support and everything else, and 40 hours later she was gone. Never said another word.

What had happened was a vein burst in her esophagus, and it was all based on having a damaged liver. When she was 15 she was given a blood transfusion in Mexico, and she developed hepatitis. For 45 years, that virus was working on her liver. When she died, the specialist said, "Your wife had a great desire to live." He was amazed that she had lived to be 60 with that virus. She retired June 28. She died July 27. She didn't even get to enjoy her retirement.

I was devastated. I couldn't believe it, because I lived always on the assumption that I would go first. My father died when he was 47. I figured when I died, Maria Elena would be a merry widow -- not too merry, but ... We were invested, we had tons of money, because I'd started working as a photographer and a writer with the New York Post in 1985, even while I was still working at my day job. I've photographed Britney Spears before she was Britney Spears. Bimbos like Lindsay Lohan and Paris Hilton. I was already taking photographs and making a fortune. For example, I get a call from the National Enquirer, they say, "Aubrey, we want a photo of Marla Maples ..." I made $10,000 for a photograph I didn't know I'd taken. You take a photograph that nobody else has -- it's worth a fortune. Anyway, I was shocked. It was I the merry widow, instead of her.

I've dated 300 women since my wife died. Some of them I date for one night and I don't want to see them again. Others I want to see. I love women. I love every type of woman. They have to have a brain. I've dated many very famous women. I was dating Grace Hightower -- Robert DeNiro's ex-wife ... I like slender girls. I don't like buxom women, fat women, big busts, I mean, I was friends with Anna Nicole Smith and when she hugged me, my head disappeared in her breasts. I don't like that.

I have no wisdom to offer about relationships. I'm just very realistic. I think I've got both feet on the ground. I think I've got common sense. It's not wisdom. I'm a practical person.

I live for the day. The past is over and I can't change it. Live for the moment. I mean, I was sorry to see her go. I grieved. I went through all her things -- all the photographs and all the times we had together. You do that. There's a period of grief. But immediately, within a few days, I went out, took photographs and everything. I was out every night and that helped me get through it. I had something to live for. I didn't say, "Oh, she's dead. I'm going to kill myself and join her." That's nonsense.

About life and death, I'm very dispassionate. In 1939/1940, when I was 8 years old, living in Manchester, we were bombed every night. In one night, eight bombs fell on my street. My father died when I was 13. It was a big shock to my family, because it changed everything -- my whole life. So I can look at it dispassionately, because this is how I've looked at everything -- dispassionately.

I don't want to marry anybody again. I've done it, and it's enough. I don't believe in marriage.

We just discovered the leading cause of divorce: Marriage! Here's a guy who was married for 39 years -- happily -- we were young and stupid, but it turned out that it worked out well. I married a sweet, wonderful, bright, intelligent, beautiful, looked after -- always dressed perfectly -- always look like a million dollars, always want to jump on and have sex with. She was a wonderful, marvelous woman. But I don't believe in marriage. I think it's a horrible institution -- and who wants to live in an institution?

People marry for many reasons. Many people marry, and I truly believe it, because they fear being alone. Most husbands hate their wives, and most wives hate their husbands. Or, worse than hating, which shows a little passion, they're indifferent. Many don't have sex. If you go to a restaurant, there are couples that never say a word to each other. The whole time. It's amazing. Whereas, at the other table there are two girls talking the whole time -- because they're not married! But the married couple has said everything they had to say to each other. It's disgusting.

I'm dating a woman now, she's Chinese, she's 36, and she's a doctor. She's the first woman I've let stay overnight for a long time. She loves to read. I read a biography every night, and she reads the papers. We put out the lights, screw, then we hug each other, go to sleep. In the morning we screw again before she goes jogging. It's wonderful! I love her body. I got to hold on to her little tits. It's great for my arthritis. And there's no odor to her whatsoever. She had never had many love affairs. Not one man has ever gave her oral sex. Not one man. Well, I give her oral sex every night. She can't wait to get to bed.

She studied ballet in China, so she does rhythmic exercises. It's like living with a model, a dancer. She takes off all her clothes when we stay at home and go to bed, and to just have that body next to me, I can't resist. I screw her every night. It's better than jogging in the park, it's better than seeing a Broadway show, it's better than photographing a celebrity.

All my friends have taken Viagra. Don't be stupid. You don't need Viagra. Nobody needs Viagra. The dysfunction in sex is you don't like the woman you're with. You're sleeping with a 55 year-old woman who's fat, who's repulsive, who doesn't turn you on, and you have to have sex with her because she's your wife. She demands it. So you do it reluctantly. That's not love. That's not pleasant.

What makes a woman special is that you just want to be with them 24 hours a day. You never get bored with them, and you'd rather be with that woman than any other woman in the world. When I want to be with her constantly, I enjoy her company, she stirs me up passionately so I want to have sex with her all the time -- then I know this is the woman for me! Whereas if I'm with a woman that is angry or annoying or does things that turn me off, or says things that irritate me -- what's the point of making a life insufferable? I want to live the best possible life possible, and if a woman contributes to my happiness, then I want to be with her. If a woman does not contribute to my happiness, I don't want her.

But there were some pretty really big events a few years before we split up. We moved out to Montana due to my husband's job in about 1983. And then we moved back three and a half years later. We came back to the Twin Cities. My husband was starting a new business. I was not seeing the great stress that he had during that time, and I wasn't in sympathy with that, I guess.

I was just kind of plugging along being a mom and being probably not the best wife in the world. I didn't take care of myself as much as I should have the early years of our marriage. I got just so into the children, and I was just so focused on them and doing all the things that I was supposed to for them, that I didn't do enough things like going to exercise class or just even going out and having fun with my girlfriends. I just way felt like I had to be the mom and be everything for everybody in that family. He wasn't very helpful because he had stresses. Over a few years' time, things were sort of deteriorating. It just sort of crept up on us. We just weren't communicating.

There was one separation for a few months where my husband moved out. I can see myself and I can see him in the kitchen. I can't remember really what led up to it. We must have been in some kind of discussion, but all I remember was we were both standing in the kitchen. He said he was leaving, something about that he was leaving. And I said, "Oh?" And I said, "When?"

He told me later he was shocked. I probably was feeling some relief.

That lasted a few months, and then he was back, and then it was maybe a year and a half later he started a relationship with someone and announced that he was leaving again. By then I didn't know that he had another friend, but I knew I didn't really care, because things were not that good.

We were divorced a few months afterwards, and it was then that I realized this was such a huge thing. I spent about a year sort of wallowing. I was devastated and really down on myself. It wasn't that I missed him or was sorry that he was gone, but I was born and raised Catholic, and for that marriage to have failed was just a huge thing for me. A failure of the dreams that you have when you're young, that this marriage that you got into was going to last forever.

In those first couple of years, so many things came up, things I didn't give him credit for. Things that would happen around the house, and I'd go "Oh my God. What am I gonna do here?" Things that, you know, he was always there to take care of them. A lot of financial things. And different things that came up with the kids. I had a suspicion that my son was probably smoking marijuana, and what I did is I took these little weedy things that I found in his bedroom in a plastic bag up to the police station to ask if that's what it was. The guy said, "You and your husband need to have a talk with this kid." I guess Tom ended up talking to him. So that kind of stuff, everyday stuff of being a parent. I did miss that.

That same year a brother of mine died, and he was my favorite. He was an older brother and died suddenly, and I just felt, "Oh -- there's a lot goin' on for me here. All my advisors are leaving me." Because he was another one I could go to and ask questions.

But then I started learning to do things. Especially a lot of financial things that I had never bothered to -- I had no idea about our family's finances, and that was my fault because he had always encouraged me to be more interested. So I learned more about that. I was pretty independent.

We were divorced for five years. During those five years I think I thrived. I did my job. I did a lot of studying and got a higher position. I was a nurse in the oncology system at United Hospital in St. Paul, but I got into a supervisory position. I was very content with doing the things I was doing for myself -- as far as my job went, as far as maintaining relationships with my children, who were by then off on their own.

I don't think that I ever would have started a relationship with someone else. I had a couple guys that asked a couple times to go out to coffee, go out for a drink or something, but I just wasn't interested in that. There are some religious values that I have of my Catholic upbringing, and unless I had a marriage annulled I would not have gotten married again to someone else. Or probably even have gotten into a relationship.

If someone had told me that we would ever get back together, I would have laughed. Because it wasn't just a separation. We really did sever the ties. Except that we did have to communicate about the children.

While he was seeing this woman, we would get together for a couple of hours on Christmas. He came to my brother's funeral. But there was nothing except he was there because it was his duty and I was tolerating his being there. We weren't unfriendly, but we weren't in any kind of relationship at that time.

Our first granddaughter was born about October of 1995. And there's something that happens when [laughs] you become a grandparent. It feels like your heart is just sliced wide open -- or for me anyway. I wasn't aware of what was going on at the time, but there was so much love for this child that I was opened up to be able to receive again.

It's probably similar to when you are first in love with a girl and you wake up every morning and everything is wonderful -- that kind of thing. It does open you to other relationships ,and you're a more optimistic and open person at that time, whereas when you're getting ready to divorce and things are falling apart in your life, you're more closed.

Looking back, that was the time when we began corresponding a little more. And then it was shortly after that I heard that he was no longer with this woman.

I can't pick out a minute. It just evolved over a year's time. We started visiting the grandchild together. And from there, once in a while we'd do stuff together -- go to a concert or something. It seemed really natural. Then one day my daughter said to me, "Mom, are you and Dad dating?" And all of a sudden it occurred to me. "I guess we are." [Laughs.]

I remember the first time we kissed again after all this time. It was at his home and I was dropping him off after we had gone somewhere. It felt like I was a young teenager having my first kiss. We weren't staying over at each other's houses or anything like that at that time. I remember going home and thinking, "Well, this is kind of silly that I'm feeling like a young kid again."

And then another time, maybe a couple of weeks after that, when we were departing after a nice evening, I had driven and took him back to his house, and we were just having another little kiss goodnight -- he said, "Dory, next time bring your toothbrush." And I'm going "Oh my God." Here I am, a grown woman, and I'm feeling pretty much like a young kid.

I think he wanted it a little more than I did, to get back together. I think he was lonely. I had learned to accept myself. I could have been happy just going on the way I had the last five years. It didn't feel like I needed another person at that time. But, you know, we kept on; we had fun together.

We had talked about getting married again, but I still wasn't sure if that's what I wanted. We decided we'd wait until after our daughter's wedding because we didn't want take away from her enjoyment. I guess we waited another six months.

Our second wedding, we had a mutual friend who's a judge in Pine City, Minn., and we got dressed up -- not in wedding clothes. He wore a suit, and I wore a bright red dress, and we had corsages. We went up to the courthouse and his friend married us. Our kids didn't come. We didn't invite them. And then we went and had lunch with our judge friend and went out for dinner, and that was it.

So we got married December 26, 1966. We divorced in, I think it was, 1991, and we remarried in 1996. We celebrate our anniversary on the day that we were first married.

I guess I don't look back and have any regrets about anything that we did. We weren't the first people this had happened to. And more and more I hear about other people getting back together.

I think we're in a really nice place in our lives now. We're ready to help each other through whatever might come in the next years. We're both getting a little older -- any day there could be a health issue that could diminish one of us or devastate one of us.

It just -- we grew back into a relationship that I'm pretty satisfied with now. And I think he is. That feeling of failure is gone now. And I think we both admitted to ourselves -- probably not as much to each other -- all the ways that each of us needed to change to make it work again.

We're just so much more tolerant of each other. We've gone through a lot together and we're older, and I think that getting older makes you see that there's so much more to the world and to love and to life than what you see when you're young.

It taught me there's so much more to love. Accepting everything about the other person even though, in any relationship, everybody doesn't love everything about that person, and if they say they do, I don't think that they're being honest.

In my everyday living with the guy, you realize you just have to let some of this stuff go. Little things -- they seem like fairly childish to me.

We have our lake cabin on Lake Superior near Schroeder, Minn., like 78 miles northeast of Duluth. We actually spend seven or eight months of the year here. And then we have a condo down in the Twin Cities, in St. Paul.

OK, I'm looking out the window and I have some beautiful flowers and pots out here and stuff, and my husband. For about two or three weeks, he's been running around the yard, buttoning things up for winter. You know, putting away hoses, putting covers on different parts of the house for winter so things don't get in there. And it's October. I'm going, "But we still have five weeks before winter. Do we really have to worry about this?" And he says, "Oh no, I'm not gonna be doing this in the middle of the winter." And I pretty much need to close my eyes to it now.

Or: My husband has taken up cooking the last couple of years. I'm really thrilled about it now, but he's rearranged the whole kitchen. The first day I came in and couldn't find anything. I just was going ballistic. This happened a couple years ago. And now I just think, "OK! He cooks! Let it go and just keep looking for the stuff that you need." So that's a couple examples.

I guess that before, I was more controlling than I ever wanted to admit. I think I probably wanted things my way or no way a lot of the time. There was probably a lot of me overreacting, and him withdrawing. At the time you don't think you're overreacting at all. And he didn't think he was withdrawing at all. But that's what you learn after a lot of years of looking back.

When we were starting over, it felt like we didn't have any real attachment to each other except we had been married so many years before -- like 25 years. We were both free. I felt I was a different person and I had learned new things. And surely he had, too. I guess we had learned to be kind to each other again, or good to each other. To be more careful to listen to the other person and not reacting. Listening. I guess that's a huge thing.

We kinda hung out. I think all the youth groups went out to pizza, and then every once in a while, we'd talk 'cause our families knew each other. And then time just passed. I was going to college, and about four years later, I got a graduation announcement in the mail from her. I guess she hadn't forgotten. And I thought, "Wow. She's grown up." [laughs]

She had blond curls. Kind of sandy blond, green eyes, perfect teeth, which I love, and a smile that blows you away. For me, she was beautiful inside and out. Really, really kind heart. There was just a gentleness to her. When I saw her picture -- something just clicked. I felt a connection. And I was like, "Man, I'd love to just see how she's doing."

We went out on a date. We went to Mann's Chinese and saw a movie and we went to Maselli's, one of the oldest Italian restaurants in Hollywood. It was an awesome night. I remember putting our hands in the middle of the stars' handprints in the cement outside the theater, and she picked up her hand from one of them and our hands just kind of came together.

We kinda knew that night, like, this was planned out, this was supposed to happen. Like, divine intervention. I believe that. I believe God wanted us to be together. I was dating somebody else, but I knew after our first date that it was over with the other person.

So. Then things just kind of accelerated 'cause our families knew each other, and we had some history. We got married 10 months later.

There were some tough things at the beginning. Her mom gave me a couple of challenges. One was that I needed to go find a good job. If I was gonna be in the ministry, I needed to have a good job, which I didn't have yet. So I went out and got a youth pastor job. And when it came down close to the wedding, she didn't want to let go of Sam. Sam was 18, so I kind of get it. But she basically talked Sam out of getting married, and sent announcements out to everybody to call the wedding off. This was about a month before the wedding. And I'm just like, "You gotta be kidding." So me and her mom had a couple good conversations. [Laughs]

Sam called me like nothing had even happened, "Hi, Craig, how are you?" And I'm like, "Well, I'm just a little devastated." She started crying, and I told her, "Sam, you know, if I'm the right one and if you love me and you wanna get married, you know what to do." She wanted me to come up and get her in Visalia, and I said, "No. If you want to get married, you need to get your stuff together and come down. If this is what we're supposed to do, let's do it. But I'm not gonna come get you and make you get married." I didn't know what was gonna happen. But about seven hours later a car drove up.

We went ahead with the wedding at my dad's church. Her mom didn't come, a lot of her family didn't come. And that was devastating for all of us. But after a couple of years, we patched it up. But interesting enough -- it made it so much deeper as far as our love for each other. Even though I had great support from my family, it was her and I for a couple years. I think couples go into marriage with a false sense of what it's really like, and they don't realize that it's a commitment. You have to stand by somebody. I think it made us say, "You know what? No matter what we face in life, we're going to do it together and we're going to stick together."

We've been married 19 years. I mean, we were really blessed. We had Corey and Courtney -- Corey's 17 and Courtney's 14. Corey and Courtney are just awesome and great grades, great hearts. Just awesome.

It's kind of a funny story. When Corey was 12 or 13, we thought that was gonna be it. We felt like, "Hey, this is all you can want right here as far as kids were concerned." They were getting older, and we were looking forward to doing more things as a couple, having date nights. We were doing OK financially by that time, but in the ministry it's not like you're making a ton of money, so we were excited that we were gonna be able buy some things, go traveling more together and different things like that.

I went to go get a vasectomy on a Thursday. And then Sam called crying on the phone on Saturday and said she was pregnant. And our whole world just changed in that moment. Everything that we thought life was gonna be about completely shifted.

In the beginning, Connor responded just like any other baby. I could talk to him and he would respond. He had eye contact. He had everything. He was as normal as any of our other kids. And we're not blaming this, but obviously, you know, there's a big debate about it; shortly after he got his vaccination shot, about two months later, he got an ear infection, and it just started changing where he wouldn't look at you. He hardly made any eye contact. When you said something to him he wouldn't respond. He would begin to go sit by himself. Kind of became distant in ways. He started rocking. And what was really hard for us was: How does a baby go for a year and half from being totally responsive and then all of a sudden it just shifts?

You know how a lot of kids can walk up to you and say hello. Tell you what they want, tell you what they need. It took my son 'til he was at least 3 and a half to give you an idea of what he wanted or needed. When he got hurt, we weren't sure because he would give no reaction. He would have to really bang his head hard if he fell or something like that. [Editor's Note: No scientific study has ever shown a conclusive link between vaccinations and autism.]

From the beginning, Sam was right there, maternal. That just seemed like that's how moms are built. She was just gonna hold him. The mother usually, automatically connects, and her life becomes that child. And Sam was the same way, connecting with parents through the Internet, and trying everything from diets to you name it.

But dads connect emotionally. So I would say, "I love you Connor," and he would just look at me, or he would look away. I come from a family that hugs a lot and very expressive in how we feel. It was probably the most devastating thing that's ever happened to me. And dads, what they want is what guys try to do in general -- they want to give the answer, solve the problem and stuff like that. And when they can't necessarily solve the problem, and the mom is so engrossed in finding that cure, they pull back. A separation begins to happen and arguments begin to take place. And unfortunately, it's affecting families in such a huge way.

I'd been a youth pastor in L.A. for many years, and planted a church in Seattle, and became executive pastor at a church in L.A., and then I worked with a guy named Tony creating youth curriculum videos and music. He's produced some huge million-sellers on the Christian market. And about four years ago, I got the call from Lakewood Church here in Houston -- it's the largest church in America. Joel Osteen is the pastor. He's the most watched pastor in the world -- about 9 million people watch him every week. So they were building this huge children's building and they needed a pastor to come in and help design that and build that and so we came here.

And it was valuable for me to be here at the church, to be around somebody like Joel that really lifts people up and brought hope. Joel has key phrases he uses, he'd say things like, "You're a victor, not a victim." And what he's saying is, "You know what, you've gotta believe that you can overcome this. Don't be a victim. Don't look at issues that way. Keep moving forward."

And that was right around the time we got the diagnosis. I remember the day that it happened. Connor had been tested and everything. I remember I was driving home from work and my wife called me and said, "I just got back the diagnosis and they said Connor has autism. He's in the middle of the spectrum." You never know until you get the diagnosis. It's like until you hear the diagnosis you're still not sure. And there's this kind of finality with that when you hear it. And I started getting all these thoughts like, "Your kid is not going to be like the other kids. He's going to always have problems. He's not going to be accepted."

And I remember just going, "No! I'm not gonna entertain these thoughts." I remember hitting the gas, driving home, going in the driveway, and I ran up the stairs and I pick up my son upstairs in his home and I just held him. I looked down and I said, "Connor, you're a victor, not a victim." I said, "You can do all things through Christ's strength." I just started speaking words of hope into his life. I wasn't going to let my circumstances destroy the tremendous love that God gave me.

After we got the diagnosis, I was determined never to walk backwards and experience death in this relationship. I was determined to always bring hope, always move forward. So, what we did, if we had an argument or frustration, stuff like that, we never let it go on. And that might have started from the very beginning, when we first got married. We never let the sun go down without saying, "I'm sorry." The Bible talks about that. Even though we might get into an argument or get frustrated, or I'd feel a disconnect, I would always turn back around and say, "You know what, we're going to work through this." Because if I kept on pulling backward, then I knew there was gonna be death -- not physical death but death in the relationship.

What people do when they get in hard situations -- they get fearful. And that's death, because that stops whatever is trying to connect or come forward. Pulling back makes me feel desperate. Like there's no hope -- until you engage again and walk in that situation again and work through it. And it's the reason why marriages fail -- because one person gave up or stopped feeling hope. Only takes one, you know, in that situation. And this is the quintessential thing -- it really comes down to how you're gonna respond. Are you gonna let fear and insecurity and anger and all those things pull you back, or are you going to choose to move forward?

Obviously I have a great faith in God. Because it always seems like God gives you enough so you can keep going. There's one thing that he gave me from the very beginning. A lot of autistic kids don't respond. To anything. Now I could ask Connor, you know, questions, I could ask him for a hug, and he wouldn't do it. But then I learned that if I asked him, "Connor, give daddy a kiss," he would turn and give me a kiss. No matter what, Connor would turn to me and give me a kiss. And it's almost like I felt like that -- God -- knew what I needed, you know. [Cries.] It's still hard for me, right now.

It's kind of turned around for me and Sam, where what was originally pretty devastating has also been the greatest gift, because man, our love is so much deeper than I ever could imagine. I thought I loved pretty well [laughs]. But with Connor -- you celebrate every little moment. Every little time he kisses me or every little time I get a hug, you know -- we do this kiss with Connor. It's called the Connor sandwich and Sam kisses him on one side of the cheek and I kiss him on the other side. And when we do the Connor sandwich, man, that's just showing him we're right there -- we're gonna get through this together, and you're gonna live a good life. It's incredible.

And since then, when I got the diagnosis, there are times, obviously, just like anybody else where I go, "Man, this is really hard." But it's less than before. Where I might dwell on it longer before I, don't dwell on it as hard. I go, "No. You know what? We're gonna work through this."

All my kids have different challenges in their lives. Corey's going to have a different challenge, Courtney is going to have a different challenge. And Connor will have a different -- that's just life. That's just kids. And if I had a choice with Connor having autism or being strung out on drugs, let's say -- I mean -- is that any harder? Would I want that to happen to one of my children? Absolutely not. So I don't have to face those obstacles that other parents have to face, and they don't have to face some of the obstacles that I have to face. I just need to thank God for the blessing I have with him.

It seems like God's always testing you, just refining you. And that's been the greatest thing for me and Sam, is that we're such better parents today. We love so much deeper than we ever did. We celebrate every little thing because God's proven faithful and we realize how blessed we are right now. Connor's made me a better person, and I think God allows you to go through those things so you'll love deeper. And care stronger. And learn to hope for more.

After we got Connor into a specialized school and saw what they were doing, we looked at different churches, to see what they were doing, and they're basically just baby-sitting these kids, letting them watch a video, different things like that. And I said, "Man. Why couldn't we do that in the church?" So Sam started a support group centered on special needs and autism. And she's reaching out with Texas Children's Hospital, and we're reaching out to families all over. And we've also launched a prayer chain where any time any child comes in or any time there's a need we'll let one person know, let another person know, let another person know and before you know, you could have 100 people praying for that child.

It started out with us wanting to help out our son. And then you realize how desperate the other parents are that you come in contact with. You come together and you see: This isn't just about our family. And you realize, "Man, I'm here for a bigger purpose. Connor's here for a bigger purpose. It's not just for us, it's to impact others." And now it's gonna impact hundreds if not thousands of lives.

I mean, we're still going through it. But now that we know that every little thing we celebrate is another victory for us, it helps build our faith. For instance, in the support group that Sam launched, a young boy, 14 years old, tried to commit suicide because he just couldn't understand why he was so different than the other kids with his autism. And here Sam is reaching out to this mom trying to comfort her and build her back up and just speak words of life into her.

I have the greatest wife in the world. I mean, I just don't know of anybody who loves me any more, that loves my children any more, that is so giving and caring, and, you know, not a lot of guys can say that for 19 years of marriage [laughs]. I love her more every day and sometimes I don't even realize how much I love her until we go through some of these struggles. It just -- it's so deep.

And then we had this new busboy. I remember seeing him one day when he was leaving. I was talking to my friend Carol, and I said, "Cool! Who's that?" and she said, "It's the new busboy." He was Brazilian. He didn't speak a word of English. He was picked up at the airport by another Brazilian guy, and the next day, he started working in our restaurant. He didn't know anything. He had a family in Brazil. Kind of left his wife, really. They kind of split up. He had gone straight from her to working here and sending money back -- that was the aim.

And we worked together for a long time. He had a really nice aura. Full of kindness, and he was hard-working. I suppose I really fancied him. The first time I saw him, I said to Carol, "I want to have his children." [Laughs.] But I meant it. I had this feeling, "That's the man I'm going to have children with." I wanted to have children with someone I fancied and really liked, and I was in a relationship with someone that I didn't really have a sexual sort of connection with.

He was two years younger than me. We would talk. He would ask me, "Can I have Coke, please?" and I'd say, "Who do you think you are that you can ask for drinks? Get back to work, you dog." [Laughs.] He'd go really red. And I'd say, "I'm kidding. I'm joking."

Most of our conversations were conducted between the Mexican busboy. Hector couldn't speak English, so he would talk to the busboy in Portuguese, which is somewhat similar to Spanish, and the busboy would speak to me in English. Or he'd write me little notes in broken English. And then we arranged to go on a date. We met at the Telephone Bar in the East Village. He was all dressed up for it. He brought flowers.

I remember saying to him, "Do you want some wine?" And he didn't understand that. I was like "Vino! Vino!" He had this little dictionary, and he took it out and I remember thinking, "How can he not understand 'vino'? My God! He's good-looking, but he's an idiot!" And then we had sex and everything, and -- I really did like him a lot!

And then I went back to France to visit my mom, and so it kind of stopped. I still had the boyfriend. But it was all right, because I'd found out that whenever he went back to Italy, to Rome, he would have little flings. So I thought, "OK. I understand now." I understood why it hadn't been right between us. And when I came back from France, Hector and I had another date. Next thing, we were sort of going out. We didn't tell anybody. They caught us kissing in the corner, and then it all kind of came out.

When I said I wanted to have children, he gave me this little lecture about money and drinking and responsibility and not having money and how having children is a big responsibility. I ended up getting pregnant the next month. We wouldn't have bothered to get married, but we needed to for him to get legal, to get his papers. So I had to get my citizenship, because I'd never bothered with that yet. Then we got married after my daughter was born -- Dominique. We got married twice actually. He found out he hadn't gotten divorced properly in Brazil, so we had to get that annulled, and then we got married again.

My brothers laugh at me. Because the count, just before I left him, he'd always be talking about his big estate. The big estate that he was going to get. Which he did. So my brothers always joke, "Ah yes, she left a distinguished Italian count for an illegal alien ... who doesn't speak English and is retarded." [Laughs.] But now they really like him.

I love him. But I sometimes hate him. We fight a lot. Sometimes it's money, because I spend more. I'm really bad with money. And he's more organized. He's a plumber's helper. The money's pretty bad, and he works long hours. We don't have enough money to live -- so sometimes it's that. Sometimes we argue about me going out with other guys. I have a lot of male friends. They were friends I met before him. And it's like, this very Latin thing -- who you can see and can't see. He wouldn't speak to me for a few days. He was doing that for a while.

Oh, and we argue sometimes because he says I don't let him finish what he's saying. I finish his sentences with not the right ending. We argue like that, for lack of communication. On the phone, I don't know what the hell he's talking about. He doesn't speak English properly. I don't speak Portuguese. So sometimes he says something, and I say, "I don't understand you!" [Screams.] In the office the other week, I found a plumber's job for him on Craigslist. And I called him and told him, and he said, "What? What does you mean?" And I said, "I'm fucking helping you!" It drives me to distraction.

I think it's a lot to do with not having a formal education. He doesn't read ... he didn't even go to school. He went back to school a bit when he was about 18 or 19. I mean, he's intelligent. But he was working when he was 8. He has made an effort. But -- he's crap at it. I thought he'd learn -- and he didn't! [Laughs.] But I'm not great at it either.

A friend of mine says you have to have three things in common: intellectual compatibility, emotional and sexual [compatibility]. So um, we don't have intellectual. But that's the thing: I have friends who have very intellectual relationships. That's really important to them. So sometimes I think, "Am I missing out on all that?" Like, the best-friend kind of thing? But that's the choice I made.

A lot of people don't have much sex because of their lifestyles, but they're still into each other. But a lot of people who have been in a relationship for quite a while -- they don't really talk about those intellectual things anymore. You talk to people about how did you meet, and they describe the thing, and they're having this memory, and it's so clear that the memory has to keep them going. They argue a lot. The way they speak about their partners, the way they speak to each other, the way they -- everything. It turns my stomach ... it's so awful.

I'll give you an example. I had a friend that I thought had a really wonderful relationship. She'd been with her partner for 10 years. They were both very intellectually in tune and very successful in the media and everything. They discussed everything, and they really seemed like close, close friends. And then she met another guy and she just fell in love with him. And of course, you know, problems had been happening, but nothing they ever talked about, or even they were problems that other people wouldn't think were necessarily problems.

And she fell completely in love with this other guy who was completely the opposite of her partner. She broke off her relationship and her children and everything for this other relationship. When I thought back, there's so many times when there was a kind of contempt. It came out just a little bit. He wasn't very good at doing practical things. And I think a light bulb or something had gone off, or maybe it wasn't a light bulb, it was something a bit more demanding, like maybe the fuse or something, and he was slightly unsure of what to do. And she said, "Just put that in there," and she starts looking at him with absolute contempt and hatred.

I think being physically tied to somebody makes you maybe kinder than that. I think if you have a good sex life with somebody, there's a fundamental respect for that person. There's a boundary that you can't cross, in terms of behavior between you. I think -- when your lover becomes your best friend -- you tell everything to him, and you share everything, and you work together, and you do everything together, maybe in the end, it becomes boring. Like, you can no longer smell the person, and it affects the sex. And ultimately, if you don't have that physical connection, you will leave, or you'll have an affair, or you'll find someone else, because that's what really you're hungry for. I think sex is the only intuitive thing that you do. It's not verbal. I think it demands a certain amount of mystery or independence to keep it good.

I have a lot of friends, who, when they're talking about sex with their partner, they go, "Oh, I can't bear it." They pretend to be asleep. You know, this isn't just one of my friends, it's most friends, like 97 percent. They say that they have sex maybe every month or two months. And I'm thinking, "Why have I ended up different from my friends?" And I think it's because we can relate sexually.

A lot of people I know that don't have sex -- it's because they can't be bothered. Since you can't be bothered it means that you're not too interested in the other person. And what differentiates that between a friendship? I've been in that relationship myself, where we haven't really wanted to have sex. I've gone through all that. It's a horrible place to be.

When kids come along, the relationship isn't "I love you. Oh my God, I love you, I love your mind." It's all about the kids and about work and the division of work. It becomes incredibly un-sensuous. I know this because I'm around our kids all the time. We have three of them now. But we've managed to keep things sensual. To a fault. [Laughs.] It's lovely. It's still good.

It's better even. But our relationship's gotten better as well. I am connected with him. I look forward to having sex and I look forward to seeing him and kissing him and those things, you know. I like the way he smells and lots of things like that. Kind of simple things. That man-woman stuff has lingered since the day we first met, really. He's very strong about who he is. He always wants sex every night, so it's just sexy, you know? It just feels natural: Have sex and then sleep. It connects you to something. To life, you know, to something important.

But it's more than just being turned on by hot, foreign dark guys. [Laughs.] It's a certain emotional sensibility he has. His emotional instincts are right -- about people, about things. He's much quieter than I am. He's quite shy. And more. I notice this so much in New York: So many people never consider other people, how they have to struggle to get by. They pass them on the street, lying down on the ground, and they never stop and consider what it's like, what it means, that they don't have proper food or a place to stay. These people go around all the time saying, "Oh, I deserve this, or I deserve that." Hector's of the other kind. He's had a hard life. He understands people. He stops and gives money to people. It's a goodness. He has a goodness in him.

I followed my instincts. I've never regretted that. I thought, I can never stay with someone who I don't have that intimate connection with, that chemistry. It wasn't like, Oh, I want to have good sex with someone and then marry them. I'm not that naive here. With Hector, it's the feeling of his being independent, capable and hardworking, the very opposite from my last boyfriend. And the thought of having someone who could look after you -- it's kind of an instinctive thing. Someone who's responsible -- to me it's a turn-on.

I'm one of those people who things always happened to. I never chose a career. And with this relationship, I wanted it. I created it. It doesn't matter if it was a good idea or a stupid idea. I wanted to live with this person, have a baby with this person. I'd never dreamed it would last this long. But I hope I grow old with him. Why not let it happen? I thought, "What's the worst?" The worst is that we don't stay together.