Love Story: Couple Makes Sweet Music for Valentine's

By C.K. WOLFSON

Jacob Weissman, 89, gingerly joins his wife, Nikki Langer Weissman,
80, next to the large Steinway and softly asks, "Do you think I
can still do it?"

She shifts to make room beside her on the bench - "Of
course you can."

With no further preamble, Nikki, all expertise and dramatic
flourish, Jacob, with restraint and technical authority, lift their
hands in unison. In an instant, a Schubert sonata ripples through the
second floor living room and hums underfoot. Sitting straight, trusting
each other for rhythm and beat, for beginnings and endings, they create
music together.

Something perceivable, something apparent in the tender nonchalance
of their dialogue and the familiar way they move around each other,
signals their thoughtful regard. Yet neither remembers exactly when,
after living together for more than 15 years - "a long
engagement" - they married. "Once I got [academic]
tenure, I didn't want any more commitments," Nikki says,
explaining they were always very happy. But then, almost on a whim, they
quietly married. She says it was for the grandchildren: "It made
things less complicated."

Theirs is a 35-year, matter-of-fact romance; two strong,
accomplished individuals who take pleasure in the measure of their fit
together. She still glances at him as she talks, as if to check the
facts with eye contact and he, insisting he is not the romantic sort,
still describes her as a "startling vision," to which she
responds with a girlish smile.

Their home, a converted, 100-year-old, picturesque Chilmark barn, is
an expansive dreamscape of antiques, art and personal collectibles
- as cozy as it is elegant. "The doing is mine," she
explains, "the appreciating it is his."

They sit side-by-side on a couch in the sunroom addition, Jacob calm
and composed, filling in the details as Nikki, with a flutter of
gestures, weaves the chronicle of their partnership. He thinks their
meeting was a lucky accident; she thinks it was fate.

"May I tell it?' she asks Jacob. "It's a
wonderful story." She recounts how they first "began to
talk" in 1967 when the Long Island Railroad strike forced them to
carpool to Hofstra University together - he lived at the 5th
Avenue Hotel in New York city and she lived in the Village. She was
divorced, an associate professor in psychology. He was separated, a
professor of law and economics. Yes, she loved his obvious intellect,
but she adds, "He was the only one on campus I knew who wore
Brooks Brothers suits and I thought he was just enchanting."

And Jacob thought she "was a very fascinating person."
Chuckling, he adds, "I became a persistent nag. I wanted to see
her all the time."

They were the talk of the faculty, Nikki, the Bronx-born radical
sympathizer, Jacob, the conservative chairman of the economics
department, living together. They laugh at the idea that they were
somehow scandalous, although she says it was their living arrangement
that kept Jacob from being named provost.

The meager list of differences Nikki tries to compile includes
things like thermostat preferences, eating habits and, "I always
get the New York Review of Books and he gets Commentary."

Jacob had a privileged childhood that included sailing around the
world - "and those are the things I'd love to talk
about," he says. His wife, an expressive speaker, smiles,
"One of the things I fell very much in love with was when
we'd lie in bed together and he'd tell his stories. And his
voice was so melodic. There was something about the way he related
things that gave me such pleasure, I can't tell you."

Jacob says Nikki makes him feel secure rather than anxious. "I
finally met someone who was sturdy and sensitive, and I wouldn't
let go of her."

Nikki says, "I really don't need anyone else."

But there are the respective children, grandchildren and a
great-grandchild - and Nikki, with effervescent pride, gathers
their pictures, books and photographs from table tops and shelves to
share. Jacob's son, Stephen Weissman, is a well-known rare book
dealer in Britain; Nikki's daughter Elizabeth Langer, married to a
Georgetown University law professor, is a Washington, D.C., attorney;
son Kenneth Langer, married to Jennifer Smith, is an environmental
scholar with a doctorate from Harvard in Sanskrit. And in a world that
sounds close to perfect, she bemoans their not being in proximity.

The Weissmans first came to the Vineyard as a couple in 1969,
"a marvelous, marvelous summer," says Nikki. Their winter
routine is, she admits, very self contained. Jacob describes her
projects as being creative, "energetic," and his own as
administrative, "passive:" the hospital board, the up-Island
Council on Aging and the occasional lecture.

To illustrate his detail-oriented nature, he asks if he should tell
the story about one of the photos she's taken out. Yes, she says,
knowing he's about to tell about the Investment Company of America
stock he bought in 1929. He was 16, about to leave for the University of
Michigan, when he bought the stock from his summer earnings at his
father's spring manufacturing company. And he keeps it still. The
photo Nikki holds is from the company's annual report, which
featured him. "And I still have a little ledger book in which I
keep entries going back to 1929," he says.

Ah, but she wants him to tell his golf story, and he explains he
regularly played at Mink Meadows, but each consecutive year, his golfing
partner died. "I took my clubs to the council on aging and said,
‘I'm never playing anymore. I'm just killing off all
my partners.'"

When Nikki says she thinks she knows everything there is to know
about him, he laughs. No, he says, he does not think he knows everything
about her. "I don't have that kind of imagination," he
says. "You have to have an imagination to follow her."

They are the great loves of each other's lives. But how to
explain the success of the partnership?

"I think that we respect each other's strengths,"
Nikki says. "That's very, very important. He says,
"I'm a generalizer in a way, whereas Nikki has many more
specific experiences . . . so we've kind of given to each other a
different style."

"I'll tell you what I would tell my young students and
my own children when they would say something about being in love with
someone," Nikki says. "I would say, take him, this young
person, and go to dinner with the people you respect and honor most. And
if you're proud of him, that's okay. But if you have to make
excuses or explain - oh, he's this or that - then
don't do it. The test is, can you sit back and be proud of
him?"

She looks at Jacob carefully, then says, "I am very proud of
him."