No such thing as too late for a love story and song
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F. Scott Fitzgerald lied. The Jazz Age author said there are no second acts in American lives, but he never met John Murray or Marjorie Smuts.
Both widowed and in their 70s, they married on Dec. 28, but that's not the half of it.
I met the newlyweds in their Shadyside home on a recent afternoon after hearing about their first week of marriage from Mr. Murray's son, Tim. She served tea, and her husband played the piano, but again, I'm getting ahead of this tale.
Mr. Murray's former wife, Liz, died peacefully in November 2010 after a long illness. They'd been married 55 years. Mr. Murray, 79, the chancellor of Duquesne University who still teaches two classes in its law school, was at her hospital bedside every day for months. The months after her death are a blank, he said. "I don't know what I did."
He snapped out of it when he decided despair wasn't what Liz would have wanted. One day last January he arranged a dinner with Ms. Smuts, a widow since 1984. She was an old friend of the Murrays, having served with John on the board of Federated Investors for more than a dozen years.
The dinner was just to be two old friends talking. They met in a crowded French restaurant in Shadyside and "four hours later we looked up and nobody was there."
Each of them drove home, Ms. Smuts said, asking themselves, "What the hell was that?"
Eleven months and a day after that dinner, they were married in the Duquesne University chapel. Only after they picked a wedding day was Mr. Murray reminded that he'd chosen the same date on which his own father remarried, at 86. (Those Murrays -- they never tire of marriage.)
Anyway, falling in love got John Murray behind a piano again. He'd learned to play as a boy in a Northeast Philadelphia rowhouse, the neighborhood most of America later saw in "Rocky." The young Murray was pretty serious, but he forgot all about Mozart and Bach once he discovered there was real money on the cocktail circuit.
He had his first musical payday at 14 and, as a high school and college student, he led quartets on the Jersey Shore, playing for singers from Judy Garland to Al Martino. Mr. Martino, whose "Here in My Heart" topped the pop charts in the summer of 1952, started as a South Philly bricklayer singing in the Murrays' living room. But young Mr. Murray turned down a chance to tour with him in order to stay in college.
"He really could have amounted to something," the new bride smilingly told me.
PG STORE
Mr. Murray welcomed the chance to get behind the piano at the wedding reception at the Duquesne Club, playing with his old friend, the great jazz guitarist Joe Negri. Somebody stuck a tip jar on the piano and "I think I got $7," Mr. Murray said.
That was two weeks ago. Last weekend, the new couple went to Washington, D.C., and arranged to meet with Bill and Jean Dempsey, whom Mr. Murray stood for as best man 56 years ago. Mr. Dempsey suggested dining at the Hay-Adams, the grand hotel across from the White House.
What Mr. Dempsey didn't know was that, while a law student at Catholic University, Mr. Murray was the first piano player the Hay-Adams ever had. (The woman who ran Voice of America would come in each night, order one martini, have him play "Spring Will Be a Little Late This Year," then leave. He never learned why, but also never forgot it.)
So as they were heading into lunch, Ms. Smuts mentioned to the maitre'd that her husband had been the swanky room's first piano player. Soon enough, they were surrounded by the manager and waiters, who wanted more than just photos with him.
Most encores don't come 50-some years after the last act, but Mr. Murray played "Somewhere Over the Rainbow" for the staff and other diners, and any troubles in the room melted like lemon drops. There was applause, after which Mr. Murray rejoined his table. Later, another customer came over and persuaded him to play again, this time to even greater applause.
How good must that feel? I've no clue. At 22, I made money in delicatessens. A return gig slicing salami in the back of Waldbaum's probably wouldn't warrant a single hand clap.
Can these newlyweds keep up their streak of eventful weekends?
"I think we're going to a movie,'' Mr. Murray said.
It better be good.
First Published January 15, 2012 12:00 am
