How can a New York bad boy and a Maryland angel stay together, and in love, for 35 years?

With great difficulty!

I met Lorraine during my two-year stint in the U.S. Army. I was a captain in the Dental Corps and was stationed in Fort Meade, Maryland. Fort Meade is located midway between Baltimore and Washington D.C.

Lorraine was a student at George Washington University, majoring in speech pathology. Perhaps my "New Yawk" Bronx accent presented her with a lifelong challenge. I thought I spoke "poifectly."

We met through a mutual friend whom my wife doesn't talk to anymore. On our second date, due to odd circumstances, I brought my mother along. We were going to an Al Hirt-Ella Fitzgerald concert in Wolf Trap Park in Washington D.C. When I called Lorraine to tell her that my mother was in town, and asked her if we could make a threesome, Lorraine did not flinch at all. "By all means, bring her!" said Lorraine, as if it was not at all unusual to go out with a boy and his mother on a second date.

As Lorraine stepped through the door of her Silver Spring, Maryland home in a stunning pink outfit, my mother said, "She's the one for you!"

I always listened to my mother and I proposed four months later. Listen to this romantic proposal: "I am leaving the army and going back to New York. Are we going to get married, or what?!"

Till this day I am sure it was the uniform that clouded her mind and made her say, "Yes." We were married in Washington D.C. one year later at 16th Street and Crittendon Avenue, in a synagogue. The synagogue was famous for taking your plates away while you were dancing.

Lorraine came to New York City and amazed me. Every job she applied for she got, 100 percent!

She stood New York on its ear! Who could resist her caring manner and her intelligent wholesomeness? She was the real McCoy.

We took an apartment in Jamaica near my newly opened dental office. Cooking and housekeeping came slowly to Lorraine. She did not believe in draining spaghetti and her marinara sauces were quite watery.

Also, underneath the bed was a treasure trove. Anything you needed was always there.

We moved to the suburbs (Westbury) with Cara Ellen, our first-born. When we put her on the grass, she didn't like its texture and she cried. I complained, "I'm spending $32,000 for a house and this kid doesn't like grass." Adam Glenn and Gregg Marshall came along and we were five Greenbergs.

Let me get back to my Valentine card to Lorraine.

If I ever win the Nobel Prize...

If I ever get elected the best dentist in the world...

If I ever invent the cure for cancer...

If I ever hit a home run in the World Series...

If I am ever elected president of my temple...

...It would all mean very little.

At Heaven's Gate I would say to St. Peter, "The outstanding accomplishment of my life is that Lorraine loved me. Yes, Lorraine Rochelle Meyerovitch loved me."

That's enough. Lorraine loves me!