Welcome back to Ancient Wisdom, our Sunday series in which writers over 70 tell us how they are aging gracefully. Last week, Joseph Epstein, 88, kvetched about dealing with technology as an octogenarian. This week, Anne Roark, 74, and Marshall Goldberg, 78, talk about their nearly 41-year marriage—and what it’s taken to make it endure.
Marshall Goldberg: I moved to Los Angeles in May of 1979 to be a screenwriter. I was lucky—within 10 months, I got my first job. I wrote for Diff’rent Strokes, and later for The Jeffersons, and still later for Paper Chase, Newhart, Silver Spoons, LA Law.
Anne Roark: At the time, I was a reporter at the Los Angeles Times. People at the paper kept telling me I should meet Joy Horowitz, a woman who worked in another section. When we finally did meet, we went to dinner at Maurice’s Snack ‘N Chat, an old LA institution. She was great, so I asked her at the end of the evening if she happened to know any single men. It turned out she was a storied matchmaker.
She proceeded to ask me, I don’t know, 25 to 50 questions: “What books or magazines do you want him to like to read? What do you want his interests to be? Do you want someone who is athletic? Curly hair or straight?” And on and on. At the end of it, she told me she had the perfect man for me. And it was you. I later found out she had fixed up all of her single women friends with you.
