Celebrating Valentine's Day in the Five Towns

In honor of Valentine’s Day, two local couples — one from Lawrence and one from Hewlett — shared their experiences and advice on what makes for a long-lasting marriage.
Claire and Lester Ganzfried of Lawrence will celebrate 57 years of marriage on March 29. They met at a dinner at the Havelock Hotel in Lenox, Mass. during its annual Tanglewood Music Festival.
“We all sat at the table; girls on one side and boys on the other,” she recalled. “He was sitting across from me. I asked him, ‘Do I know you? You look familiar.’ You might say that I picked him up.”
After Claire, 81, and Lester, 87, married, they had their first home in Brooklyn. Once they outgrew that house, they moved to Lawrence, where they have lived for the past 32 years. They have two children.
Over the years, the Ganzfrieds have traveled “all over the world,” Claire said, listing that as her favorite memory. “Travel is our favorite thing to do together,” she said.

Another thing the couple likes to do together is attend programs at the Center for Adult Life Enrichment in Hewlett, Lester said. “We enjoy the activities and taking part in the events at CALE,” he said. “We’ve met so many lovely people there.” At CALE, Claire also teaches a Flexercise class.
Their secret to a successful marriage, Claire believes, is due to excellent communication. “It’s really important for two people in a marriage to be able to talk to each other,” she said. “They should be able to come together in agreement on the most important things. They can have completely opposite interests but at a fundamental level, they should agree.”
Don Newman and Harriet Morgenstern, both 83 and from Hewlett, met through his daughter and her son, who dated but ended their relationship amicably. Newman lost his wife first, and then Morgenstern lost her husband.
“We are truly second-timers, where some might say we met because of convenience, but we truly fell in love,” Newman said. “We fell in love like a couple of teenagers.”
Married on Nov. 30, 1996, the couple eloped to the Catskills to the Concord resort. Newman recalled that it was a Friday night, a small service, where a rabbi kept a few people around and performed a small service.
“We sat at our table with two other couples,” he said. “We had a bottle of champagne and a congratulations note for newlyweds at our table waiting for us. A man came around and wished us congratulations and asked us how long we were married. I looked at my watch and said, ‘Fifteen minutes.’”
Morgenstern remembered how she originally didn’t want to get remarried but her mother suggested she think about it. “Marriage is up to the individual,” she said. “Some people just live together and spend every day together. We just thought it was the best for us.”
Newman maintains that they had good luck in meeting each other. “We don’t take life so seriously,” he said. “A sense of humor definitely helps.”