So, you know that now-controversial NY Times Weddings "Vows column" about the couple who met each other at their kids' pre-kindergarten class while they were married to other people? The Times even opened up commenting for a while, but then had to stop accepting them (example: "If the couple had a sense of decency and wished to truly respect the feelings of their ex-spouses, they would have denied themselves the pleasure of having their 15 minutes of fame in the New York Times. Their choice to satisfy their own vanity is very telling."). Well, now the bride, former WNBC 4 reporter Carol Anne Riddell, is explaining why she and new hubby advertising executive John Partilla told their story.
Riddell spoke to Forbes' Jeff Bercovici, “We did this because we just wanted one honest account of how this happened for our sakes and for our kids’ sakes. We are really proud of our family and proud of the way we’ve handled this situation over the past year. There was nothing in the story we were ashamed of.” And of the backlash, it's "sort of surprising to me. I think people are focusing a lot on the negative, but there was a lot of positive... we’ve had a lot of people say to us how brave we are to do this, how commendable it was that we were as honest as we were." Yeah, it's honest to say, "I didn’t believe in the word soul mate before, but now I do," which is what Partilla, who has three kids with his previous wife, said of marrying Riddell. But it depresses the rest of us.
Fun fact: The Times ran Riddell's first wedding announcement in 1995... and it also ran Partilla's first wedding announcement in 1994. The only way the Vows column can make it better is if the jilted spouses get married and wants their story featured—sorta like how Shania Twain is now engaged to the husband of the woman who allegedly had an affair with Twain's husband (diagram to come).
