Pssst! The secret to a lasting marriage does not include cheating with a teenager, spending family time surreptitiously viewing Internet porn sites or partying with strippers.
Apparently no one told Peter Cook, the man Christie Brinkley has been divorcing in a Long Island courtroom, or Alex Rodriguez, the highest-paid player in baseball who ditched his wife less than three months after she gave birth to their second child.
It seems neither Brinkley, the 54-year-old former supermodel who's four times married, nor Cynthia Rodriguez will ever have the experience of sitting at their 50th wedding anniversary party and hearing their husband profess his gratitude and love.
To Marie Herdje, that was worth more than a Hamptons mansion and all the magazine covers in the world.
Marie and Walter Herdje met in high school in New York and married a year after graduation – on April 13, 1958. Two months ago, at their 50th wedding anniversary party, Walter Herdje toasted his wife with the impassioned exuberance of a newlywed.
“I considered myself lucky to date Marie,” Walter Herdje said, as the banquet room went quiet. “She was voted the most beautiful girl in the school. She agreed to marry me, which made me the happiest man on the planet.”
The guests oohed and ahed.
Walter went on.
“Marie, I love you very much and thanks for the best 50 years a man could hope for.”
Marie Herdje still sighs when she recalls the moment.
“Isn't that beautiful?” she asked.
While Brinkley and Rodriguez have achieved celebrity by excelling in their respective careers, the Herdjes could teach them about succeeding in marriage.
“You have to be polite to each other,” Marie Herdje said. “That's the biggie. Caring for each other's feelings.”
There's nothing polite about spending time with Madonna – which A-Rod supposedly did – when your wife has recently given birth to your second child. Or spending thousands of dollars on online pornography and sleeping with your 18-year-old office assistant, which Brinkley's husband has admitted.
“People today have no commitment,” said Robert Geberth of Freehold, N.J., who just celebrated 51 years of marriage to his wife, Ann.
“It's really kind of pathetic,” Geberth said. “They go from one partner to another and don't take commitment seriously.”
That could certainly be said for A-Rod, whose exploits have landed him in the tabloids almost as often as his baseball feats.
Or Lisa Marie Presley, whose marriage to Michael Jackson lasted 20 months and whose marriage to Nicolas Cage lasted 3 months and 15 days.
Or Britney Spears, whose first marriage lasted 55 hours.
All of those celebrities failed to make it to eight years, which is actually the average life span of a first marriage in the United States, according to the National Center for Health Statistics. Some 48 percent of marriages in the U.S. will end in divorce. In 1880, of course, the subject barely made the papers. The divorce rate back then was less than 5 percent.
“Today, which is sad, people are shocked when you tell them you're celebrating your 50th anniversary,” Marie Herdje said.
Marie Herdje's advice for getting through the hard times?
“Communicating and learning to be quiet when you should be,” she said.
“Sometimes you just have to go upstairs and grumble to yourself.”
And sometimes all the grumbling in the world won't fix what has been broken: “That Peter Cook – there's no reason for what he did,” Herdje said. “I don't blame Christie Brinkley. If he had been my husband, he'd be gone. You have to know when to cope, and when it's time to give it up.”
If anyone knows the secret of a lasting marriage, it would have to be Peg and Bill Schick of Lakewood, N.J. Last October, they celebrated their 70th wedding anniversary.
Bill Schick met Peg Davis in high school. They married on Peg's 18th birthday in 1937. They had five children. He retired as a fire department battalion chief.
Together, they survived the end of the Depression and the death of a daughter to polio during the 1951 epidemic.
Schick said he has watched the media coverage of the recent celebrity divorces. “They're shallow,” he says. “They're not in it for the long haul.”
Today, he's 92 and his wife 89. In some ways, their marriage is better now than it was seven decades ago when they were newlyweds, Schick said.
So how did they do it?
“Love,” Schick said. “That's all. Just love.”
