VOWS

New York Times 2000

Marley Kaplan and Bernard Dushman

By LOIS SMITH BRADY

	Photographs by Nicole Bengiveno/ The New York Times
	SANDS POINT, N.Y., AUG. 6 At the Village Club, friends and family, above, carry out the huppah, symbol of the home. The bridegroom blesses the bride, top.
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F anyone tried to play a chess game the way I've lived my life, they wouldn't win," said Marley Kaplan, the executive director of Chess-in-the-Schools, a program in New York City that promotes chess as an educational tool. "A lot of my adult life has not been thought out in such a strategic way."

Ms. Kaplan, who reached her present age of 51 without marrying, has zigzagged her way through life, rarely thinking of her next move. The winter after graduating from the University of Miami, she and a friend headed west, with no definite plans and no snow tires. They ended up in Aspen, Colo., where Ms. Kaplan remained for seven years as a "drugstore cashier/ski bum," until she felt it was time to get serious. "I left two days after I turned 30," she said.

She earned an M.B.A., moved to Manhattan and began working 14-hour days as an investment banker. She lived in an Upper East Side studio with curtains sewn by her mother, began wearing business suits (also sewn by her mother) and rarely had time to date. "In Aspen, I had a great love life, but after that, my love life was dormant," she said.

In 1992, a mutual friend, Alyse Booth, introduced her to Bernard Dushman, a former assistant dean of Yale Law School, who was then a political consultant to the presidential candidate Paul E. Tsongas. Mr. Dushman is now 53 and the vice president for administration and technology of the Brooklyn Navy Yard Development Corporation, an industrial park.

The two immediately disliked each other. Ms. Kaplan thought he was rude and gruff; he thought she wore too much jewelry and was too old for him. "Bernie was going through a stage where he was dating younger women, significantly younger women," Ms. Booth said. "But I wasn't going to give up."

Ms. Booth kept inviting them to parties, and they kept having sour conversations. Finally, they were seated next to each other at Ms. Booth's Christmas dinner, and, as Ms. Kaplan remembered, "amazingly, something just clicked." She added: "He said he would call me. He waited three days. I almost gave up. For women, when someone says, 'I'll call you,' it means in the next five minutes."

Their first date lasted about 12 hours. "Before we knew it, the sun was coming up, and we were still talking," Ms. Kaplan recalled.

The relationship soon became serious, at least from her viewpoint. "I decided within the first three months that I wanted to marry him," she said. "But Bernie was in no state of mind to even talk about marriage."

He had been divorced years before, but was still brokenhearted about it. And he continued to believe Ms. Kaplan was too old for him, especially since he wanted to have a family -- someday. "I only had one regret in life, only one, and that is that I didn't have children," he said.

But his priorities began to shift, though imperceptibly as a glacier. In 1994, they moved into a West Village apartment, often disagreeing about furniture (he likes modern, she likes antiques) and the future. "He was so ambivalent about getting married, it became a bone of contention between us," she said. "I finally figured: 'So what? We won't get married.' "

Then, with no warning, he proposed in May last year on their Arts and Crafts-style couch, the only one they could agree on. As he recalled, "I woke up one Saturday morning and thought: 'We're best friends. I know I will never find anyone who is more on my side than Marley. This is it!' I just turned to her and said, 'Do you want to get married?' " Stunned, she replied, "What exactly do you mean?" He meant the real thing: on Aug. 6, they took their vows in a Jewish ceremony at the Village Club of Sands Point on Long Island.

Mr. Dushman now says Ms. Kaplan is the perfect age for him. "She knows who she is, and it's a delight," he said. "That's an advantage of being with someone who's been around for awhile."

He added: "We're not going to have children. We're just going to have us."