I Support Your Marriage

10/28/2024

Fifty-three years back, Ron Howard went on a date that would change his life forever. He was with Cheryl Alley, a classmate from John Burroughs High School. They made their way to Toluca Lake to watch the rerelease of the classic film “It’s A Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad World” (1963). That night, something special began between them, sparking a relationship that would not only last but thrive in the world of Hollywood.
Their connection first grew in high school. Ron was already appearing on "The Andy Griffith Show," but to Cheryl, he was just another high school boy she liked. Their bond wasn’t rooted in fame but in something much more genuine and lasting, creating a strong foundation for their future together.
While Ron’s career took off during his teenage years, Cheryl remained a steady presence in his life. She stood by him as his fame grew during his time on "Happy Days." In interviews, Ron often expressed how Cheryl’s presence kept him grounded, ensuring their relationship stayed strong despite the pressures of Hollywood life.
They married in 1975, when Ron's career was soaring, beginning a lifelong journey together. The couple would go on to have four children, with Cheryl stepping back from the limelight to raise their family. As Ron’s directing career blossomed, Cheryl created a stable home life for their family, providing a sense of normalcy amidst the chaos of fame.
As Ron transitioned from television actor to acclaimed director, with films like "Splash," "Apollo 13," and "A Beautiful Mind," Cheryl continued to support him quietly but steadfastly. While attending premieres and standing by his side in public, their relationship thrived in the private moments they shared, raising their children and building lasting memories together.
Cheryl didn’t just stay in the background. She made her own mark as a writer and took on small roles in Ron’s films. Their partnership extended beyond their personal life, often collaborating on ideas and projects, creating a strong team dynamic that went beyond romance.
Their children, inspired by their parents’ creativity, entered the entertainment world as well, with daughters Bryce Dallas Howard and Paige Howard finding success in acting. Ron and Cheryl instilled values of humility and hard work in their kids, guiding them toward their dreams while staying true to themselves. Now, as grandparents to six, they are enjoying this new chapter of their lives.
In an industry known for short-lived relationships, Ron and Cheryl’s love has endured. Ron attributes their lasting marriage to shared values and open communication. They make time for each other, whether through simple walks, movie nights, or quiet dinners, ensuring their bond remains strong.
Despite the fame surrounding them, Ron and Cheryl have always kept their focus on family, love, and loyalty. They’ve handled the ups and downs of public life with grace, proving that true love can flourish, even in the demanding world of Hollywood.

09/27/2024

Jerry Stiller on meeting Anne Meara: "She seemed to sense I had no money, so she just ordered coffee. Then she took all the silverware. I picked up her check for ten cents and thought, 'This is a girl I'd like to hang out with.'
Meara met Stiller in 1953, and they married in 1955, after a two-year relationship. Until he suggested it, she had never thought of doing comedy. "Jerry started us being a comedy team," she said. "He always thought I would be a great comedy partner." They joined the Chicago improvisational company The Compass Players (which later became The Second City), and after leaving, formed the comedy team of Stiller and Meara. In 1961, they were performing in nightclubs in New York, and by the following year were considered a "national phenomenon," said the New York Times.
Their often improvised comedy routines brought many of their relationship foibles to live audiences. Their skits focused on domestic themes, as did Nichols and May, another comedy team during that period from the Chicago Compass Players project. "They were Nichols and May without the acid and with warmth," notes author Lawrence Epstein. They also added a new twist to their comedy act, he adds, by sometimes playing up the fact that Stiller was Jewish and Meara was Catholic. After Nichols and May broke up as a team in 1961, Stiller and Meara were the number-one couple comedy team by the late 1960s. And as Mike Nichols and Elaine May were not married, Stiller and Meara became the most famous married couple comedy team since Burns and Allen.
Though Meara was born, baptized, and raised a Roman Catholic, she converted to Judaism six years after marrying Stiller. She took her conversion seriously and studied the Jewish faith in such depth that her Jewish-born husband quipped, "Being married to Anne has made me more Jewish." (Wikipedia)
Happy Birthday, Anne Meara!

09/10/2024

Andre Agassi and Steffi Graf - married 22 years

Stefanie Maria Graf is one of the most successful tennis players in history. She has won 22 Grand Slam titles, winning each one at least four times. She is 55 years old (June 14, 1969) and was born in Mannheim, West Germany (now Germany).

Graf began playing tennis at the age of four. She started playing professionally at the age of 13. Her father limited her play initially. She steadily improved and by the time she was 18, she was on top of the tennis world.

In 1987, Graf won her first career Grand Slam tournament, the French Open in a thrilling 6-4, 4-6, 8-6 match over Martina Navratilova at Stade Roland Garros in Paris. She won the French five more times in 1988, 1993, 1995, 1996, and 1999.

In 1988, Graf won all four of the Grand Slam tournaments. That was the first of seven wins at Wimbledon. The other years were 1989, 1991, 1992, 1993, 1995, and 1996. She won the Australian Open in 1988, 1989, 1990, and 1994. She won five times at the US Open in Flushing Meadows: 1988, 1989, 1993, 1995, and 1996. Additionally, she won the first-ever women’s singles gold medal in tennis at the 1988 Summer Olympics in Seoul. She also won the bronze in doubles that year and the silver in singles in 1992 in Barcelona. Her only doubles Grand Slam victory was in 1988 with partner Gabriela Sabatini at Wimbledon.

Graf holds the record for being number one the most number of weeks, 377. Her 22 Grand Slam titles are only behind Margaret Court with 24 and Serena Williams with 23. She retired from tennis at the age of 30 in 1999.

Graf had legal troubles with German authorities in the mid-90s. Her father Peter had been managing her personal finances. Proper taxes were apparently not always being paid. He served just over two years in prison for the offense. The case against her was dropped and she made a large payment to the government and a charity. He died in 2013.

Graf was the WTA Player of the Year on eight occasions. She was German Sportsperson of the Year five times including four consecutive years in the late 80s. She was inducted into the International Tennis Hall of Fame in 2004 and the German Sports Hall of Fame in 2008.

Graf established a foundation in 1998 to support children traumatized by crisis. The Steffi Graf Youth Tennis Center in Leipzig, Germany was dedicated to her in 1991. She is involved with other charitable work with her husband.

Graf has two children with Andre Agassi (pictured in 2024). They have been married for 22 years. He is also a retired career Grand Slam-winning and Olympic gold medal-winning tennis player. They live in Summerlin, Nevada, a community near Las Vegas.

08/01/2024

Mark Andrew Spitz is a nine-time Olympic gold medal-winning swimmer. He won seven gold medals at the 1972 Summer Olympics a record not passed until Michael Phelps won eight in 2008. He is 74 years old (February 10, 1950) and was born in Modesto, California.

The family moved to Honolulu when Spitz was a toddler but they were back on the US mainland a few years later. He joined a Sacramento area swim club at the age of six. By the time he was nine, he was being coached by Hall of Fame Swimming coach Sherm Chavoor. When the family moved to Santa Clara, California, he was coached by another Hall of Famer, George Haines.

In 1967, Spitz set his first World Record in the 400m Freestyle. By the time the 1968 Summer Olympics in Mexico City rolled around, he owned 10 World Records. He was disappointed with his results in Mexico City, winning two gold medals. They were in the 4x100m Freestyle Relay and the 4x200m Freestyle Relay. He won a silver medal in the 100m Butterfly and a bronze in the 100m Freestyle.

Spitz’s Olympic coach in Mexico City was legendary Indiana University Swim Coach James “Doc” Counsilman. He decided to attend Indiana and won eight NCAA titles while there. The Hoosiers won six consecutive team swimming titles in the late 60s and early 70s., four of which he was a part of. He won the James E. Sullivan Award in 1971 as the nation’s top amateur athlete. He was accepted to the IU School of Dentistry but his life went a different direction.

In 1972, Spitz ran the table in Munich for the Games of the XX Olympiad. He won seven gold medals setting new World Records in each event. As an individual, he won the 200m Butterfly, 200m Freestyle, 100m Butterfly, and 100m Freestyle. As part of relay teams, he won gold in the 4x100 Freestyle Relay, 4x200m Freestyle Relay, and the 4x100m Medley Relay. The seven golds in a single Olympics were a record that stood until Michael Phelps eclipsed that with eight in 2008 in Bejing.

Spitz retired from swimming at the age of 22. Nearly 20 years later, he was offered a million dollars if he could qualify for the 1992 games. He failed.

After Spitz retired from swimming, he made an attempt at show business. He did appear in a few television shows but that career largely failed. He has been an occasional television analyst for the Summer Olympics.

Spitz initially made significant money from his fame from endorsements. As time went by, his fame and those dollars faded. He has worked as a motivational speaker, corporate spokesperson, and stockbroker. He still gets occasional commercial endorsement contracts.

Spitz has two sons with Suzy Weiner (pictured, 2023). They have been married for 51 years. They live in the Westwood neighborhood of Los Angeles, near the UCLA campus.

04/14/2024

Alan Alda is an Emmy Award-winning actor, author, and director. He is known for many roles but most famously for his role as Captain Benjamin Franklin “Hawkeye” Pierce in the CBS megahit M*A*S*H*. He is 88 years old and born in the Bronx borough of New York City.

Alda is the son of actor Robert Alda, known for portraying George Gershwin in the biographical film Rhapsody in Blue. The younger Alda was born with the name of Alphonso Joseph D'Abruzzo. He contracted Poliomyelitis when he was seven years old in the early 40s. He earned a degree from Fordham University in English. He served in the United States Army in the mid-50s.

Alda made his first television appearance in 1958 on The Phil Silvers Show. In the 60s, he made occasional guest appearances on shows such as Coronet Blue and Route 66.

In 1972, Alda was cast as Captain Hawkeye Pierce for M*A*S*H*, a TV adaptation of the 1970 film MASH. Originally a comedy, the show evolved into a drama in many aspects. It depicted the crazy life of a mobile surgical hospital during the Korean War. He was with the show for its duration of 11 years, much longer than the war it portrayed. He appeared in all 256 episodes. Its final episode is among the highest-rated TV episodes of all time. He directed the final episode. He won five Emmy Awards for his work on 27 nominations.

During his M*A*S*H* run, Alda also appeared in a number of television movies. He took 10 years off from television work after his time playing the Army surgeon.

In 1993, Alda started hosting Scientific American Frontiers on American Public Television. He hosted 81 episodes over the next 13 years. In 1993, he had an Emmy nomination for the HBO television film And the Band Played On, a critically acclaimed docu-drama on the AIDS epidemic.

Alda had a short but memorable run on five episodes of the NBC megahit ER in 1999 where he played Dr. Gabriel Lawrence. In 2004 he joined the cast of The West Wing. He won the Emmy for Oustanding Supporting Actor in a Drama Series in 2006 for his work on the series. In more recent years, he has appeared on shows such as 30 Rock (Emmy nomination), The Big C, The Blacklist (Emmy nomination), The Goodnight, and Ray Donovan.

Alda first appeared on the silver screen in Gone Are the Days! in 1963. He starred in Same Time, Next Year which received some attention in 1978. The Four Seasons was a big hit in 1981. He appeared in Crimes and Misdemeanors in 1989, written and directed by Woody Allen. Manhattan Murder Mystery was a hit with critics but a box office flop in 1993. He had roles in Murder at 1600, What Women Want, Tower Heist, and Bridges of Spies. He received a Best Supporting Actor Oscar nomination for The Aviator in 2004. Most recently, he appeared in Marriage Story in 2019.

Alda has appeared on the Broadway stage since the late 50s. He has three Tony Award nominations. He was nominated for a Grammy Award for Best Spoken Word Album in 2008. He was inducted into the Television Hall of Fame in 1994. Alda has written three memoirs over the last two decades. He hosts a popular podcast called Clear+Vivid.

Alda is an advocate for science communication. The Alan Alda Center for Communicating Science at Stony Brook University trains STEM and medical professionals in communication skills. He supports several causes including Feeding America, Clothes Off Our Back, and the St. Jude Children's Research Hospital. He and his wife founded the Jenjo Foundation in the 90s to help poor women and children.

Alda was diagnosed with Parkinson’s disease in 2015. He has three children with Arlene Weiss (pictured). They have been married for 67 years. They live on New York's Long Island.

03/19/2024

02/22/2024

Pat Benatar married her guitarist Neil Giraldo on this day (Feb. 20th) in 1982 in Maui. 42 years later, and they're still together and looking better than ever! Happy Anniversary you two!

12/25/2023

Merry Christmas!!!

08/24/2023

Bono’s new memoir, “Surrender: 40 Songs, One Story,” isn’t just about his time and travels with U2. It’s about love.

08/18/2023

54 years ago, Judy and Jerry Griffin woke up on Max Yasgur's 600-acre dairy farm in upstate New York. It was the first day of the rest of their lives... together. The day before, Judy's car had broken down on the Tappan Zee Bridge about 90 miles south of her destination. Not wanting to miss the four-day spectacle of peace, love and music that was about to begin, she boldly stuck her head inside a nearby 1967 VW Beetle and asked for a lift. Jerry was in the back seat. The two sat side by side all the way up to Woodstock... and still haven't left each other's side more than half a century, two sons and five grandchildren later.

The best part of this serendipitous love story? The happily married couple didn't have actual proof of their fairy tale beginning as recently as 2019. But then GBH’s American Experience | PBS released the trailer for its "Woodstock: Three Days That Defined A Generation" documentary and, lo and behold, it featured a snippet of archival footage of a rain-soaked Judy and Jerry huddled together under a blanket. Peace, love and music, indeed. bit.ly/3PpypVO

01/13/2023

11/12/2022

The Future of Christian Marriage Mark Regnerus Published by Published by Oxford University Press in 2020 pp / $29.95 / 978-0190064938 Amazon Goodreads Probably by most Westerners’ reckoning, the institution...