I was 26 and working for a book publishing company just outside of San Francisco. My job in marketing meant that I met with advertisers occasionally. Unfortunately for the ad reps, we had such small budgets for each book that we never really spent money, except maybe once or twice a year in the largest industry magazines. One of those magazines had just hired a new publisher, and he was doing the rounds of all the publishing houses in New York and California, meeting the important people who made decisions. And also meeting me.

When Rob walked into my office for the first time, he was wearing a suit and tie, something that no one wore there ever. Bay Area publishing? We were lucky if people had real shoes on.

It wasn’t his suit, though. It wasn’t his nice hair or his job title or the fact that he wore no wedding ring. Or rather, it was all of those things. It was the brief connection when we realized we had both lived in Chicago. It was the irreverent look he gave me during the meeting to commiserate over another attendee’s tedious ramblings. It was this crazy feeling of familiarity that filled the entire space. I walked out of the conference room and ran into a close friend at the copy machine. “I just met the man I’m going to marry,” I said, aware that I sounded psychotic. I called my sister and said the same thing. Drawing the line at total insanity, I decided not to share my thoughts directly with Rob, whom I had known for a total of 70 minutes.

Fast forward five months to our first date, a dinner in New York, where he somehow made a request to see my driver’s license sound normal. I handed it over. His reaction was subdued, but there was a small intake of breath, as his eyes skimmed the birthdate. “You’re 26.”

“How old are you?” I asked, having decided for myself that he was early 30s.

“38.”

Rob, you see, had also decided for himself that I was early 30s. So, a 12-year age difference snuck up on us. And it was really no big deal, except to give me plenty of opportunity over the years to ask him questions about what it had been like to be alive before television and cars. I was a snotty 20-something, and he rolled his eyes at me a lot. He still does, actually.

Something that I often said to him back then, only partially in jest, was, “You’d better take good care of yourself. You’re very old and I want you around for a long time.”

He would reply, sometimes without even looking up, “Just worry about yourself.”

I think about this irony a lot. It doesn’t make me sad, it just kind of amazes me that life works this way. There you are, thinking about the future with your older husband and wondering what it will be like when he’s in his 80s and you’re still a young, hot 70-year-old, and then—ha ha!—karma bites you in your sarcastic ass.

We got married in 2008. ’Til death do us part. In sickness and in health. I guarantee that no one thinks this means caring for a 35-year-old wife who is slowly being paralyzed. But if Rob pities himself or me, I’m certainly not aware of it. He never complains. He never tells me that it’s not fair that this is happening to us. It’s hard, of course, but somehow he has this incredible capacity to deal with ALS and how it has changed our lives. Who could have known that he would be the right partner in good times and in bad? Oh, that’s right. I knew.

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