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Long Distance Love

Absence really does make the heart grow fonder for some East End couples. A famously happy example can be found in Ina and Jeffrey Garten. The East Hampton- and Southport, Connecticut based super duo have taken being apart in stride during their 50-plus years together.

As anyone familiar with Ms. Garten’s “Barefoot Contessa” Food Network television show knows, she and her doting husband live in different states during the week and cozily couple up on the weekend. “It’s Friday, and that means two things: Jeffrey’s coming home and chicken for dinner!” she says of his arrival from New Haven, where he’s the Dean Emeritus of the Yale School of Management.

The happy marriage has been built on the freedom they allow one another to pursue their dreams, she says. Her newest book, “Cooking for Jeffrey,” is an ode to her partner. “For Jeffrey who makes everything possible,” she writes in the foreword. “None of this would have happened without your love and inspiration.” Husband-and-wife writers Douglas Feiden and Lucette Lagnado, tried the “live apart together” arrangement for a year but found that it didn’t take.

The veteran newspaperman, who met his wife while the two were working as journalists at the New York Post in 1988, made the decision to temporarily leave the city to try his hand at writing for the Sag Harbor Express. Though he loved his job, Mr. Feiden eventually made the decision to return to his Manhattan nest in order to be with his journalist and author wife. “We had never been apart for long,” reports Ms. Lagnado of her 30 years of marriage. Missing her husband and traveling back and forth from the city to Sag Harbor every few days was “awful from the very beginning,” she says, adding that the situation was made even more painful because she knew how much
her husband truly loved his new job.

Ms. Lagnado’s friends, thought it would be the perfect
marital arrangement, she reports.

“They didn’t understand the sense of loss at all,” she says. “Instead, they told me that they were jealous of the freedom of the arrangement.”

Joe and PJ Delia are currently living apart due to all-too-familiar circumstances. Tending to the health of her aging parents, Ms. Delia has been spending her days for the past six months at the musical couple’s Montauk home while her rock star/composer husband of 20 years is busy working on a film score at their music studio Rockland County house.

“We both knew that this day would come,” says Mr. Delia, whose band is the focus of an upcoming documentary film by legendary filmmaker Abel Ferrara. Day-to-day life without his best friend by his side has been rough, he says, but the 3-hour distance has also fanned the flames of their already healthy romantic relationship. “I just went out last night for a quick visit and it was great.”

“Oh yeah. And he just gets cuter every single time I see him,” purrs his spouse, who is the Thieves’ backup singer, band manager and promoter. The separation has been made easier by frequent visits and lots of texting, she adds, though she misses the physical contact, or “skin hunger” as she calls it. “Normally we’re in each other’s laps so being apart is even harder for us.”

Difficult as being temporarily separated is, the physical distance is manageable because ultimately both he and his wife are secure in their relationship, says Mr. Delia. “I know it sounds cliché but it all works out when the love is there and the people are committed to each other,” he says. “Our relationship can withstand it, and our life together is sweeter because of it.”

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