Boys vs. Girls (iii)

By ages 30 to 34, women are 85 percent as fertile as they were at 20 to 24, and the rates decline to 35 percent by 40 to 44, and to virtually 0 percent after age 50. Among men, the decline in fertility is more gradual: at 45 to 50, men retain 90 percent of their peak fertility, a rate that declines to only 80 percent after 55. Males who mate with older women pass on less genetic coding, while females can mate with older men without the same problem.

On January 22, 2005, in Palm Beach, Florida, at Bethesda-by-the-Sea Episcopal Church, before 400 of their friends, Donald Trump, now 61, who is estimated to be worth $2.5 billion, married his companion of six years, blue-eyed Slovenian-Austrian model Melania Knauss, now 37. Trump was previously married to models Marla Maples and Ivana Winklmayr. Two sons and a daughter from his first marriage, and his daughter from his second marriage, attended the half-hour wedding, which was the culmination of three days of celebrations.

At the ceremony, the bride, who said she may want to have children (when her baby was born the following year, the baby pictures were sold to People for what were estimated to be “the mid-six figures”), lit the unity candle that she had used during her baptism. Knauss said she wanted an event that was “chic, elegant, simple, and sexy.” Her dress was made of 300 feet of white satin, had a 13-foot train, weighed 50 pounds, took all 28 of Christian Dior’s seamstresses 1,000 hours to stitch, and took an additional 50 hours to embroider. Trump said about Knauss, “When we walk into a restaurant, I watch grown men weep.”

According to French chef Jean-Georges Vongerichten, who donated his services, the new Mrs. Trump has “impeccable taste” Donald Trump is his landlord. The wedding cake stood two yards high and was covered with 3,000 sugar roses. The reception, held at Trump’s Mar-a-Lago mansion, featured a 36-piece orchestra.

Billy Joel, who at 55 had recently married “restaurant correspondent” Katie Lee, 23, in a wedding at which his daughter, Alexa Ray, 19, was a maid of honor, said Trump’s wedding was a “beautiful ceremony.”

When he was 53, John Derek was asked by Barbara Walters whether he would still love his wife, Bo Derek, then 23, if she were disfigured or paralyzed. He thought for a moment and said no. Bo Derek tried hard to smile, but she couldn’t.