What Is… A SOUL MATE?

With Jean it just happened. Sometimes you know. Sometimes you look at something, you look at someone, and you know. I mean, you’ve heard stories of people who meet and decide within half an hour, “I knew this was going to be the person I’d end up with.” And with Jeanie, that’s how it was. I wasn’t looking for love. But with Jean, I recognized at a gut level that here was someone who was going to complete me as a human being.

She was the bookkeeper for a friend—the same friend who chose not to date the lady with the grand piano. He was a business executive, and she was tending to his accounting. She was working on weekends because during the week she was studying at Pepperdine. I dropped in to visit my friend one Saturday, and he introduced me. She was the most charming person I had ever met; not only polite, but exuding a warmth that showed character and spirituality as well. And she was drop-dead gorgeous. I would see her at his place on other occasions too. One day, he invited me to a dinner party he was hosting, and I said, “I’ll come if you ask Jean to come also.” After that, we started dating. I don’t know if Jeanie was as instantly certain about me as I was about her. I think at first she might’ve thought I was a bit of a jerk.

I do things on whims. That’s how it was with our engagement. I had just come back from doing some World Vision work in Thailand. While I was there I found a sapphire-and-diamond ring. I had no purpose in mind in buying it. But then when I got back to LA, I decided that it would be an engagement ring.

I had also picked up a little toy truck on my trip—a little bamboo truck that was about the size of a Matchbox car. I told Jeanie, “I brought you a little dinky souvenir from Thailand.” She opened the package, and there was this truck. Then she opened the back of the truck, and there was this sapphire-and-diamond ring. No note. Nothing. I asked her to marry me.

She ran crying from the room to go see my mom, who was living with me. Jean came back in the room a couple of minutes later and said yes. Interestingly enough, when Jeanie was growing up and had her little playhouse, her doll was always welcoming her husband home, and his name was Alex. How about that!

Then we had to tell her parents, Carol and Eric Currivan, who were my age. I hadn’t met them yet. There is a twenty-four-year age difference between Jeanie and me. I was a bit concerned about it when we started dating, but those worries quickly disappeared. Still, I wondered how her dad would receive me. He was running a private investigation firm in New York, and he had arranged for a boat to host some family and friends for an engagement party. When Jeanie introduced me to him, he took one look at me and said, “I guess I won’t be calling you ‘son.’ ”

But we had a good relationship throughout his life. He would come and visit us here in Southern California. He liked nothing better than to rent a car and go driving. He loved to drive around and sightsee. He died a few years ago. There were never any bad feelings or any animosity between us. Same with Jeanie’s mom. She also visited us quite often and enjoyed a very special relationship with my mother. She’s still alive, living in a senior-care facility in New York. So there were never any in-law problems. Once again, I’ve been very lucky.

Jean and me at a charity event around the time we got married.

Jeanie would not live with me before we got married. I found that interesting. There was a little bit of old-fashioned stuff going on. Her grandfather was a member of the Regency Club in Westwood. So we had the wedding there in April 1990. When the minister said, “Do you, Alex, take Jean to be your wife?” I said, “The answer is… ‘Yes.’ ”

Leave it to me, always trying to go for a laugh. And I got one. Everybody cracked up.

As I write this, Jeanie and I have just celebrated our thirtieth anniversary. We had intended a romantic private getaway to celebrate—perhaps to our favorite place in England—but the coronavirus had other plans, so we simply stayed at home with Matthew and Emily. I ordered thirty bouquets of flowers that the kids spread throughout the house. A bottle of champagne and Emily’s paella made for a perfect celebration. This might be one of the unintended positive consequences of COVID-19… it has brought our family closer together.

In my office, near that framed check from the game show producer who stiffed me, I’ve got another framed image. Jeanie gave it to me. It’s a line from our favorite movie, Wuthering Heights: “Whatever our souls are made of yours and mine are the same.” That’s the way I look at our relationship. We are one soul in two bodies.

The best day of my life.

Emily got it right.

My wife, the graffiti artist.