USA TODAY
May 15, 2002

CEOs find marital bliss tougher than business
By Del Jones

Donald Trump, the New York real estate magnate, has some ideas about what makes a CEO's marriage work.

"A good wife will treat a CEO better than a king," he says. "That's the secret of a smart woman. She may even be the dominant factor in the marriage, but she doesn't let him know."

In the 21st century, not everyone agrees with Trump's executive suite version of The Honeymooners (remember Ralph telling Norton he was king of his castle and his wife, Alice, "just a mere peasant girl"). But many concede that successful CEOs -- leading lives of power, wealth and adulation -- face special challenges in maintaining successful marriages.

Trump, who divorced Ivana in 1990 after 12 years, admits that making a marriage work is a challenge for CEOs. "You love your work so much," he says. "Great marriages can happen, but it's very hard for anyone to compete."

It's the great divorces that make the headlines: Former General Electric CEO Jack Welch, whose second wife, Jane, has filed for divorce after 13 years, is the latest successful chief executive to concede failure at marriage.

He follows in a long line: Former Ford Motor CEO Jacques Nasser's marriage to Jennifer ended after 29 years. Anna Murdoch and News Corp. CEO Rupert Murdoch split after 31 years; Lorna Jorgenson Wendt and Gary Wendt, now CEO of Conseco, after 32 years; and Phyllis Redstone and Viacom CEO Sumner Redstone after 52 years.

Divorce is not a topic that many CEOs are eager to discuss. But married and divorced CEOs who agreed to talk about it in a series of interviews over two months with USA TODAY say staying happily married is a challenge. But it's not because their jobs are their first love. They say there are two other primary strains on executive matrimony: ego and opportunity.

* Ego. A successful CEO is the closest thing to royalty in the USA. Even the board of directors remains hands-off as long as the company is making money. CEOs snap their fingers and things get done, but they must go home to the real world where wives and teenagers roll their eyes if Dad behaves like a god.

"Someone has to take out the garbage; it can't be delegated," says Asa Lanum, the 54-year-old CEO of software company Fortel.

CEOs with successful marriages must keep their "ego in check," says Honeywell Chairman Larry Bossidy, married 45 years to Nancy, with nine children and 26 grandchildren.

Andy Dale, CEO of the Outdoor Channel, which reaches 14 million homes over cable and satellite, has been married to Cindy for 20 years. He agrees that big egos can ruin marriages.

"If I started laying down the law with my wife, I'd be in big trouble," he says. "When I told my wife I was doing this interview, she said, 'Watch what you say.' "

Ellen Sabin, executive director of the Institute for Equality in Marriage, says a common theme in divorces in all social classes is that one partner feels inferior in the marriage. That usually is the spouse with the lower income, Sabin says.

Doug Walker, CEO of WRQ, the third-largest privately held software company in the USA, has been married almost 30 years. He often goes on social outings with other CEOs and their wives. He's made this observation: Some CEOs don't need to remain the center of attention away from work, while others can never let the balance of power shift.

Not all CEOs are men. Melissa Payner, CEO of Spiegel Catalog and married 17 years, says she feels guilty about not spending more time with her two children. However, she does not feel sorry for her husband, who she says knew of her ambition from the start and has been supportive. "The spouse should understand, or he shouldn't be the spouse," she says.

* Opportunity. Many women are attracted to men of wealth and success, and CEOs say they exude a confidence that the opposite sex often finds attractive. Opportunity usually comes through the familiarity of close work relationships, and although "you've got to be real dumb" to act on it, Lanum says, plenty of CEOs apparently are dumb enough.

Temptations are plentiful. "Are you kidding? (Women) are lined up," says Eloise Lanum, 58, Asa's wife of 26 years, who avoids parties because she tires of other women fawning over her husband.

Affairs almost always have a work connection, even when they are with women outside the office. The Jack Welch split-up was triggered by his relationship with Suzy Wetlaufer, the 42-year-old former editor of the Harvard Business Review who was assigned to interview Welch as he approached retirement. Welch and Wetlaufer are still together.

Redstone wrote in his book, A Passion to Win, that his wife, Phyllis, threatened divorce several times for infidelity and made good on the promise when a picture was published in the New York Post of Redstone in Paris with a beautiful woman. "A lot of temptations come along," says Stephen Greenberg, CEO of Net2Phone, married for 36 years and a grandfather. "Nobody's perfect. Everybody looks. There are, thank goodness, a lot of beautiful women in this world."

But Greenberg says his wife, Sandra, will sometimes ask: "Do you like your home in the Hamptons? Do you like going to Florida? Think of it this way: If anything happens, you will live in a Winnebago."

"I think she's half-serious," Greenberg says.

Where do CEOs find the time for an affair? Dale says CEOs face no more job pressure than firefighters and police officers -- or anyone committed to a career.

"CEOs talk about being busy," says Detroit divorce lawyer John Schaefer, who represented both Peggy Iacocca and Jennifer Nasser. "When you represent them in a divorce case and you call them Thursday morning at 11 and say you need to see them at 2, they're there."

Schaefer says CEOs have one complaint in common when going through a divorce: "They say they feel like a giant wallet. They ask, 'What am I good for besides writing checks?' "

People change

First marriages often start long before career success is assured. Welch drove a Volkswagen on his first honeymoon, Redstone a dilapidated Plymouth. Partners who don't evolve as their spouses climb find their marriages in trouble, CEOs say.

Some marriages just weren't made to survive because people change, says T.J. Rodgers, CEO of Cypress Semiconductor in San Jose, Calif. He and his former wife, Kathleen Wright, were born three days apart in the same hospital in Oshkosh, Wis., and met in junior high. After seven years of marriage, Wright was offered a job in the Midwest and wanted to start a family. Both say they were still very close, but they wanted different things. Over the next eight years, they split up three times to pursue different lives. The marriage finally ended after 15 years.

"Bottom line is all of our top priorities did not match," Wright says.

Wright has since remarried, has a family and is an associate dean at the School of Public Health at Saint Louis University. Rodgers says he has a long, happy relationship with Valeti Massey, but they have yet to get married or have children.

Rodgers and Wright remain good friends. Rodgers takes special pleasure in sending Wright's children politically incorrect presents like guerilla outfits with berets. "She's kind of a lefty," he says.

When he sends such gifts, "I can hear him laughing across the miles," says Wright, whose children from her second marriage call her first husband Uncle T.J.

Following the leader

There are CEOs who explain away their infidelity by resorting to an executive version of an urban myth. It goes like this: Successful men have high levels of testosterone, which makes them inclined to be attracted to younger women and cheat on their wives.

They say they have read articles in medical journals that say as much. But testosterone expert Peter Snyder, a University of Pennsylvania School of Medicine professor, says he reads all the research and there have been no such articles. Some CEOs think they are fidelity-challenged by hormones. But they are as mistaken as people who buy into the urban myth that some people have awakened in bathtubs of ice with their kidneys harvested.

While very low testosterone levels reduce sex drive, men don't seem to notice any difference between normal and high levels, Snyder says. And that's assuming CEOs have high testosterone levels, which is doubtful, considering their ages.

There is some anecdotal evidence behind the theory that when a CEO is happily married, most of his executive team is likely to be happily married. But once the CEO gets divorced, within a couple of years much of the team will be divorced as well.

Divorce lawyer Schaefer says his business from auto executives picked up after Henry Ford II's divorce in 1980. Rodgers says he was talking to his six top executives in 1992 when suddenly he realized that five also were divorced.

Why? "It may be the alignment of the stars," says Walker, who has noticed the pattern as well.

Other explanations are only slightly less astrological. Some say that those on the executive team tend to be so ambitious and eager to fit in that they might unconsciously trade in their spouses just like they will take up golf or wear red ties to be like the boss.

Executives work long days, but when the CEO goes home to his family, so do the others. When the CEO is lonely and bored, they all go out for drinks after work, and the spouses are forgotten at home.