Allie Molner, daughter of KCM co-founder John Molner and stepdaughter of our other co-founder Katie Couric, tied the knot with Dylan Orenstein Saturday night in NYC. Katie was asked to do a reading and decided to take the opportunity to pay tribute to her in-laws, Paula and Herb Molner. You can read it below. Congratulations to the happy couple!
When Allie and Dylan asked if I would do a reading at their wedding, I was flattered…and truly honored. When they asked me to select something appropriate that I liked, I was panic stricken. I think I have read all the love poems ever written — from Yeats to E. E. cummings, from Elizabeth Barrett Browning to Mary Oliver, from Frank O’Hara to Rita Dove. I’ve read love letters from Abigail to John Adams, from Richard Burton to Elizabeth Taylor, from Ronald Reagan to Nancy. I’ve watched scenes from romantic comedies — when Harry declared his love for Sally and when the hot priest in Fleabag says love is “awful, painful, frightening and makes you obsessed with your hair.” I’ve read song lyrics like “I Choose You” by Sara Bareilles and “Our love is here to stay” by George and Ira Gershwin. By the way, did you know Ira wrote the lyrics to that song after George’s untimely death — which makes it all the more poignant. But nothing felt right.
After all this, I remembered what Dorothy said at the end of The Wizard of Oz: “If I ever go looking for my heart’s desire again, I won’t look further than my own backyard.” And I had an epiphany. Who better to offer some words of wisdom to a couple just starting out than a couple who has been married for 67 ½ years? Yes, Allie’s grandparents, Herb and Paula Molner.
Through the years, I’ve asked them a lot of questions about their lives and love and captured their responses on camera for posterity. When I asked them the keys to a happy and successful marriage.
Herby told me:
1 + 1 = 3.
He went on to say this:
“Everybody would tell you that someday you'll find someone, and the two of you will become one. I think that that was not only misleading and wrong, but counterproductive. I think that if you're lucky, the two of you become three, somewhat the way those Olympic logo circles overlap each other, so that you maintain a great deal of what you are, your mate contains a great deal of what they have, and in the middle, that overlap is where you share values and build."
Paula added, “We share more than a few interests, though when we don’t… we invite our spouse to pursue and engage absent the other, calling it 'how to be alone together.'”
Paula also told me: Find the friendship in love.
As well as the importance of finding the strength in another person that you don’t have. Of Herby she said, "He’s essentially a happy person. With his skiing, I say, 'how was it?' He said, 'oh, it was the best day ever again.'" And Paula added, “It’s a reality that I, who can be critical, luckily attracted a joyous other who easily makes me laugh…at me.”
And this, from Herby:
"The underlying tenet for us that made it work was that we spent the time we shared in discovery, not in perfection. And being in discovery, you never get to the end. You never have a letdown, and that's the problem with goals, isn't it? Once you reach them, you tend not to want to surpass them. So for us, it's always been a journey."
Both admitted that luck does indeed play a role. Not to mention, a sense of humor. When, at the end of the interview, I asked Herb what he was looking forward to, he told me:
Staying vertical.
So with all due respect to William Shakespeare, Khalil Gibran, Pablo Neruda, and my go-to bard, ChatGPT,
Paula and Herb Molner’s meditations on lasting love reign supreme and are the perfect elixir for you, Allie and Dylan, as you begin the first year of your more-than-67-year marriage and the two of you become three on this wonderful day.
