Pod Insights Personally Forever is a Long Time, Part 2: My Grandmother, Marianne About this episode My grandmother never sent presents for birthdays or holidays, and didn't expect us to either. She seemed to resist anything that felt like authority, convention and tradition; which is why it's so strange that she was once married to my grandfather — a Harvard-educated lawyer.
Transcript 0:00 Speaker 00 Hey there. It's me, Gavin Crawford, host of the CBC podcast Because News, a weekly show where I question my silliest friends on some of the most serious headlines. This week, we'll be finding out why British Columbia suddenly went blue. We'll talk about how AI voices are getting a little too real and check out some of the most insane things a sitting president could say on a campaign trail. I'm joined by comedians Emma Hunter, Martha Chavez, and the return of Tom Howell. Subscribe to Because News on Spotify, Apple Podcasts, or anywhere you download podcasts for free.
0:34 Speaker 01 This is a CBC Podcast.
0:37 Speaker 02 My name is Ian Coss, and you're listening to Forever is a Long Time on CBC's Personally. This show is a collection of songs and conversations about every marriage in my family that ended in divorce, which, as of this recording, does not include mine.
0:56 Speaker 03 Tojo wants to sit with me.
0:58 Speaker 02 That's fine.
0:58 Speaker 03 You can try. You can try. Come on.
1:01 Speaker 02 My wife's name is Kelsey. The dog's name is Chacha.
1:05 Speaker 03 You can do it.
1:06 Speaker 02 The three of us live in a little house on the edge of Boston.
1:10 Speaker 03 You gotta lay down. Yeah.
1:12 Speaker 02 Okay. When I started this project a little over a year ago, I made a point of not talking to Kelsey about it. I would call up my relatives on days when I knew she'd be out of the house and then be sure to close out any documents or mixes I was working on before we watched TV together on my computer. Do you hear me now?
1:33 Speaker 03 Yeah.
1:34 Speaker 02 At the time, I told myself that, as a producer, I wanted to make sure I was recording when I did finally share what I'd learned. But if I'm honest, I think there was a little shame involved. Like, just to have these questions about myself and my family was a sign that our own marriage was somehow failing. And at that time, at the time of our wedding, it occurred to me at some point later on that every single member of my family, every living member of my family, rather, who had ever been married, had also been divorced.
2:10 Speaker 03 I think that occurred to you before our wedding.
2:13 Speaker 02 Yeah, okay. So it was something-- I don't have a clear memory.
2:17 Speaker 03 I remember talking to you about this when we were talking about whether we should get married.
2:23 Speaker 02 Yeah.
2:24 Speaker 03 I remember you being like, well, every one of my family's been divorced. So like, man, marriage is scary, kind of thing.
2:30 Speaker 02 Right. Fortunately, Kelsey is really good at keeping me honest and probing for things that I wouldn't normally share. That's probably the reason we've stayed married as long as we have. So what I've decided to do, as you know, is interview all those people.
2:49 Speaker 03 Yes.
2:49 Speaker 02 And see what I can learn.
2:53 Speaker 03 Why now?
2:55 Speaker 02 Why now?
2:59 Speaker 02 I guess there was a point in our relationship where like, we'd been married for a few years. And I guess it kind of like became real or it like dawned on me that like, that we are now working on a very long-term project together. And that little choices and little deceits and little feelings would only be amplified over time. And that there was like a different kind of care and attention, even though I didn't feel like a lot changed when we got married. It wasn't like we woke up the next day and it felt like everything was different.
3:41 Speaker 02 But something in those next few years, it did sort of dawn on me that I had to take a different kind of care to follow through on that promise.
3:54 Speaker 02 And one of the reasons is my peers getting divorced. And there were a few in the last few years. And that also kind of shook me in a way because I like to think that we had as a generation, you know, millennials, like we grew up in that world where divorce was ubiquitous. And I think broadly speaking, went about it differently than our parents. And maybe I had always taken a certain amount of comfort in that.
4:31 Speaker 02 Until seeing inevitably that some of our peers, their marriages didn't last. Maybe that made me start to think more about, well, what are the models that I have for what it means for two people to be life partners? And to what extent am I bound to simply replay those things? And to what extent can I pick and choose and transcend those things?
5:02 Speaker 03 Do you mean like, the way you say bound to makes it sound like you feel like you will, it's like your destiny, you will do it whether or not you step back and think about it?
5:12 Speaker 02 No, I don't believe in, I believe in free will.
5:17 Speaker 03 Yeah.
5:17 Speaker 02 But I also believe that we all become our parents and grandparents and ancestors in ways that we're not always aware of.
5:31 Speaker 03 So is this like, an attempt to be aware of those ways that your ancestors are in hopes of, I guess in this case, not replaying them?
5:45 Speaker 02 I think so, yeah.
5:46 Speaker 03 Okay.
5:56 Speaker 02 Forever is a long time. Part two, my grandmother, Mary Ann.
6:08 Speaker 02 You're of course, the oldest living member of my family.
6:12 Speaker 04 Yes.
6:13 Speaker 02 But you're also the first person in my family, at least that I know of, who got a divorce.
6:20 Speaker 04 Yeah.
6:20 Speaker 02 At a time.
6:21 Speaker 04 Yeah. My mother divorced my father.
6:25 Speaker 02 Oh, really?
6:26 Speaker 04 Yes. And both my grandmothers, I think, were illegitimate children. So.
6:36 Speaker 02 So the family tradition, I guess, goes back even farther than I knew.
6:40 Speaker 04 Yes, yes. You know, the whole institution of marriage, it has nothing to do with love. So.
6:49 Speaker 02 Yeah.
6:50 Speaker 04 To me, all the papers are basically work of the devil, if you ask me, period.
6:59 Speaker 02 All the papers are basically work of the devil, if you ask me. Period.
7:12 Speaker 02 Those words can tell you a lot about my last remaining grandparent, my father's mother. She is, in her own words, "an old woman and born in the old world." But she has never felt old fashioned. She was the grandmother who would arrive at our house each summer in a new-used car that she had just bought in New Hampshire so that she didn't have to get car insurance on it. The grandmother, who, when I was in high school, would let my friends and I show up at her New York City apartment at 2:00 in the morning after going to a concert and all sleep on the floor.
7:51 Speaker 02 She never sent presents for birthdays or holidays and didn't expect us to either. She seemed to resist anything that felt like authority, convention, and tradition. Which is why it's so strange that she was once married to my grandfather, a Harvard-educated lawyer named Robert Goldshider.
8:24 Speaker 02 My grandmother is almost 90 now. The story she tells me begins in the mid-1950s.
8:35 Speaker 04 Okay, I met Robert Goldshider in Lake Placid. And I can tell you exactly the outfit I was wearing, a wide-flowing denim skirt. And I walked up the hill, and on the porch of the hotel stood Robert Goldshider. He said to me, "I told the headmaster to hire you. You have a job." Oh, I said, "Thank you."
9:04 Speaker 04 So then we sat down, and she said, "Oh, the owner of the hotel is giving a party tonight for the staff, and of course you are invited, and you'll be my date."
9:20 Speaker 02 So you'd come there to vacation?
9:22 Speaker 04 No, vacation, get out of here.
9:25 Speaker 02 You'd gone there to find a job?
9:27 Speaker 04 Yes, I had come there with my boyfriend, Arno. Arno already had gotten a job and I did what many young women have done in the past. I said to Arno, you know, Arno, I am so tired. You have to forgive me. I need some sleep.
9:49 Speaker 02 So you'd come with a boyfriend and before you can even open your mouth, this other handsome young man has not only guaranteed you a job, but then immediately asked you on a date?
10:01 Speaker 04 Yes, well, Arno had a 1953 crime.
10:07 Speaker 02 This man, Arno, is someone I've heard about my whole life, usually as a passing reference in a story about someone else. He was her first real boyfriend. They met as teenagers in Germany, right after World War II. They'd both survived the Holocaust and quickly bonded over a shared desire to get out of this country that had murdered so many people close to them. The first time they went out together, Arno took her to the theater to see an American play, Thornton Wilder's By the Skin of Our Teeth. Later, he showed her how to learn English by reading books and writing out every word she didn't know.
10:50 Speaker 02 He was also the one who introduced her to the foreign relief agencies that would one day help her get a scholarship to come study in America. When she arrived in New York City, he met her at the pier. What's strange is that as soon as that common goal was achieved, their lives began to diverge. Long before that night in Lake Placid, he had tried to convince her to stay in Brooklyn, to get married, to make a life together in America. Instead, she left to study at Mount Holyoke College in Massachusetts.
11:28 Speaker 02 It was the first of many moments when she chose another way. And so in my grandmother's stories, Arno often appears as a kind of specter of the path not taken and the life not lived.
11:42 Speaker 04 You know, Arno and I had met when I was fifteen and he was eighteen. And, you know, his mother had been torn away from him in Auschwitz. And he had zero social graces and desperately wanted to marry me. But, you know, through the eyes of the Mount Holyoke girls, what I wanted was a Harvard man like Robert. So what happened was that night, Robert said to me this, you know what they call screwdrivers?
12:24 Speaker 02 I'm not sure. Oh, screw, oh, the drink.
12:27 Speaker 04 But you know what it is?
12:29 Speaker 02 Ah, I don't, I think it's very strong, probably.
12:33 Speaker 04 It's orange juice and vodka.
12:36 Speaker 02 Hmm.
12:37 Speaker 04 I mean, he got me drunk.
12:44 Speaker 04 I see us dancing together, you know, cheek to cheek. Then we went to the ski jump and we sat on the ski jump and we kissed. And he said, you have come to the most wonderful country in the world and we will have a wonderful life together. That was the future that Robert painted for us and that I now had to look forward to.
14:00 Speaker 02 So is that, is that how the night ended?
14:02 Speaker 04 But we then went to his room. You know, there was sort of like a dormitory for the stairs. And it was a very narrow bed. Anyway, I wouldn't really calling it falling in love, you know. I mean, it was pure lust. I mean, nothing to do with love. But nevertheless, I was aware that he was exactly the type of boyfriend whom the Mount
14:40 Speaker 04 Holyoke girls, the biggest achievement at Mount Holyoke was a fancy engagement ring. And the girl would always get up and everybody was singing something happy, blah, blah, blah.
14:55 Speaker 02 And was that sort of in the back of your mind when you?
14:58 Speaker 04 Never, ever, no. I came from a totally different place. You know, my life had been miserable in Europe. And I have to recognize, talking to you, that you come out of a much, much happier and saner world than in which I grew up in. You know, basically, I was a total cynic. I still am a cynic. And I'm looking for some term.
15:36 Speaker 04 I was sort of wandering through life like an innocent beauty.
15:44 Speaker 02 And so is that why when, when he then ultimately did ask you to marry him, is that, I guess I'm wondering why you said yes?
15:59 Speaker 04 We met in a cafe on Sixth Avenue, near Dunkin' Square Park. And he said, will you marry me? I was leaning back and saying, oh, God, marriage really doesn't mean a thing to me. But there is divorce. I think we'll divorce pretty soon. And my mother had written to me, it doesn't matter that you don't love Robert, but once you are married to him, love will come. Well, she was wrong.
16:59 Speaker 05 When you lose someone you love, it's a complicated process, going through their things, settling their affairs, and figuring out what to do with the hole in your life that they have left. But you've got to imagine it's more complicated when that person that you love was beloved by millions around the world. Adam Cohen, the son of the late legendary Canadian poet and songwriter Leonard Cohen, sat down with us in Montreal to talk about his dad. And he talked about learning his dad's songs for the first time and then singing them together with his own son. You can hear that conversation now on Q with Tom Power, wherever you get your podcasts.
17:32 Speaker 03 I still don't understand why she married Robert. It's like, it feels like she did it because it was like the cool thing to do amongst her, like, Mount Holyoke friends, but she still doesn't quite want to admit it. That's what it sounds like in that interview.
17:46 Speaker 02 Huh.
17:49 Speaker 02 But I don't know, there's... What she said at some point about like, sort of drifting through life. I don't know, like, she really, I think in some ways, just like, didn't care. Or not that she didn't care, but it's like she'd already given up on herself or on life or the world and some small part of herself. And so she just like, went with it. I don't know.
18:17 Speaker 03 It's, it's like, she remembers a lot of what happened.
18:22 Speaker 03 But it's all just, it happened and she was there for it, rather than she caused anything to happen.
18:30 Speaker 02 But don't you think that is true of a lot of marriages? A lot of like troubled marriages? Is like, one or both parties simply like, went along with it without really choosing?
18:47 Speaker 03 Well, as you know, because we've discussed it at length, that is like, part of the reason that I wanted to get married when we did, is that I wanted to like, make the choice to, to choose our relationship intentionally.
19:05 Speaker 02 Whereas in my grandmother's story,
19:09 Speaker 02 that somehow, even though there is that kind of decision point, it doesn't feel like a decision.
19:18 Speaker 03 Yeah.
19:21 Speaker 02 Could I, so...
19:22 Speaker 04 Yes.
19:23 Speaker 02 I'm so fascinated by this idea that you got married already expecting to get divorced.
19:30 Speaker 02 Now, at that time in 1956, I mean, divorce meant something very, very different in the culture in general, right? I mean, the idea of getting divorced was not just something you did lightly in 1956, right?
19:45 Speaker 04 Well, people used to have, basically to find proof that one partner had been committing adultery. And so they hired spies and got photographs and whatnot. But in the 60s, all my, all my friends were getting divorced.
20:10 Speaker 04 We married in the 50s. All of us got divorced in the 60s. Because none of us was really happy with our marriages.
20:39 Speaker 02 Within a few years of getting married, whatever physical chemistry had existed in Lake Placid had dissipated.
20:48 Speaker 02 My grandfather had gone from a broke law student to an established lawyer, and my grandmother had become a well-off housewife with two small children. A life she never dreamed of and really didn't want.
21:04 Speaker 02 She started a graduate program in sociology, hoping to find a sense of purpose and independence, only to end up having an affair with one of her professors. This was not a first for either of them, but it somehow brought all the simmering discontent out into the open. They decided that some time apart would be healthy. And so, in February 1965, my grandmother boarded a ship back to Europe, alone.
21:35 Speaker 02 There's a series of letters that my grandparents wrote to each other during that month or so they spent apart.
21:42 Speaker 02 In the first letter, my grandmother writes from the boat.
21:49 Speaker 02 "Let us admit to ourselves that we are human. Let us admit that we acted foolishly. And let us now, in view of the children, try to settle things decently and in human fashion. All dishonesty eventually brings suffering, whether we admit it to ourselves or not."
22:11 Speaker 02 Reading these letters, I cheer for my grandmother instinctively. I've always admired her independent and often defiant spirit. But it's also a little hard to see how she talks about her own children, my father and uncle, who at this point are the only thing holding her back. She writes about the importance of placing her own needs first, and in one moment of anger says to Robert, "You can keep your luxurious apartment, you can keep your children that I bore for you and raised for you, you can keep every single damn penny that you earn."
22:52 Speaker 02 My grandfather, who is caring for the children during this time, speaks constantly of them and how much they miss their mother. In some of these moments, he feels to me empathetic and even open to change. But at the same time, he is absolutely ruthless in his attempts to pressure and shame his wife into coming back to him. He writes, "Do you want to resign yourself to the types of men who are available to a 32-year-old woman? Do you want to throw away your real potential for happiness as the focal love object of your husband and sons for the fantasy of a Hollywood plot?
23:35 Speaker 02 Come to me, and you can have everything within my powers to give you, to share with you my whole heart. Spurn it, and the price will best be known to you alone." Of course, these attempts to control his wife only drive her away. She ends her final letter by saying, "I am here in a strange city, in a dubious hotel, in a room that is not heated. I have not spoken to anybody in three days. I really could be as miserable as one can get. Yet, I am more determined than ever that I want an honest and meaningful life, that
24:18 Speaker 02 I want to read and write and study and live with a man with whom I want to live only because of the sort of person he is, not because of anything he has to offer me."
24:33 Speaker 02 I find myself relating to each of them, and at times recoiling from each of them at the things they will say and do to get what they want. It's messy. When I asked my grandmother about this period leading up to their divorce, her narrative was much more straightforward.
24:53 Speaker 04 Well, when finally it came to the point, you know, I had had affairs, Robert had had affairs, and I said, "Robert, let's call a spade a spade." He was so relieved. And what I suggested to him was what now is called open marriage. I had seen no reason to get married. I saw no reason to get divorced. And everything was working fine until I had a relationship. He said, "I don't really want this open marriage.
25:36 Speaker 04 I want to get divorced."
25:39 Speaker 02 This was in 1967, before the days of the no-fault divorce laws that would make ending a marriage so much easier in the 1970s. But rather than go to court and present proof of adultery, my grandparents took a simpler route, one which I had actually never heard of. They got divorced in Mexico.
26:01 Speaker 04 Look, I can see you need an education. Google "Mexican divorce", and you will probably find out some history.
26:15 Speaker 02 There's actually a song called "Mexican Divorce", from 1961, by Burt Bacharach.
26:21 Speaker 04 Fantastic. I'd love to hear that song. Can you sing it?
26:27 Speaker 02 I can't sing it, but maybe I could try and play it for you.
26:34 Speaker 02 One day married, next day free. Broken hearts for you and me. Takes no time at all to get a Mexican divorce.
26:43 Speaker 04 You see, that would be a perfect job for me.
26:59 Speaker 02 Johnny Carson got one. Elizabeth Taylor. Marilyn Monroe. And Katherine Hepburn. So you're in good company.
27:07 Speaker 04 Yes, yes.
27:09 Speaker 02 So who went to Mexico? Robert?
27:14 Speaker 04 Well, of course, of course. He hopped on a plane and I never read my divorce papers. I just, you know, they didn't have credit cards then. I forget what they had certain cards you could use in fancy department stores. I threw this in his face and I said, "I don't want your bloody cards anymore."
27:52 Speaker 02 So many of those letters my grandmother wrote are about the awful feeling of living a life you suddenly want no part of. In one, she says to my grandfather, "You want your pretty wife and her mink stole and your Rosenthal china and your well-dressed children and all emerging from 25 East 83rd, your comfort, your ease, and everybody telling you you are doing fine." That was not a person she could be anymore.
28:32 Speaker 02 One of those things that only became clear to me after I got married is this fact that by committing to Kelsey, I was really committing to a version of myself. The version that I am when I'm with her. The things we do, the places we live, the topics we discuss, the people we see and spend time with. It's a package. And no matter how much freedom we may grant each other, there are now boundaries around the potential lives I can lead. Boundaries that weren't there before. Sometimes I bump up against them.
29:13 Speaker 02 And to the extent that I have ever contemplated divorce, it was because I wanted to change something about myself. And changing my partner felt like the only way to do that. When my grandmother tore up those fancy department store cards and threw them in Robert's face, I think that's what she was doing. She was separating from him, but just as much, she was separating from the version of herself that she had been with him.
30:05 Speaker 02 Do you ever wonder what would have happened? How your life would have been different if you just stayed with Arno?
30:12 Speaker 04 Of course, of course, I've thought about that. Of course, my life would have been totally different. And actually, two days later or so, like, bless it, Arno, he asked me, and I told him that I'd met Robert. And, you know, there are mountains there. We were driving in this old car, on a, you know, hairpins. And he floored the pedal.
30:56 Speaker 04 I knew what he wanted was to go off the road and for both of us die. So, there was nothing I could do. And suddenly, kaboom! And we were in a ditch and the tyre had blown.
31:22 Speaker 04 I walked up to the road and before I even reached the road, the car stopped already. And a man said, "Honey, do you need help?" And I literally ditched Arno, who forgave me and became my best friend until he died of stomach cancer.
31:49 Speaker 04 And to this day, I say, "He was the only man in my life who really loved me."
32:11 Speaker 02 In Part 3, "The marriages that lasted, some for over thirty years, only to fall apart." These are the stories of my aunts and uncles.
33:16 Speaker 06 Maybe you don't see that way Oh, maybe you think it doesn't mean a thing Oh, you give me that look and you give me that way What do you don't know? I got a really good thing But maybe in another life we could be Oh, maybe in another life
33:46 Speaker 06 Maybe in another life we could be Oh, maybe in another life
33:56 Speaker 06 Maybe in another life Could be we only get one life But maybe in another life
34:08 Speaker 06 Could be we only get one try But maybe in another life we could be I don't dare to get too close I can smell your hair and I can feel you close Yes, it happen real fast, no it happen real slow No one needs to say it, no one needs to know But maybe in another life we could be Oh, maybe in another life
34:48 Speaker 06 Maybe in another life we could be Oh, maybe in another life
34:58 Speaker 06 Maybe in another life we could be Oh, maybe in another life
35:08 Speaker 06 Maybe in another life we could be Oh, maybe in another life
35:18 Speaker 06 Maybe in another life we could be
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Previous Forever is a Long Time, Part 1: My Parents, Ellen and Tom Next Forever is a Long Time, Part 3: Aunt Mia and Uncle Paul Page updated November 3, 2026 · transcript and summary are machine-generated