Today is a day when love and marriage last for a very short time. And if this is true for ordinary folk, the headlines of show business magazines prove that it’s particularly true for the star-lit couple of Hollywood. Whatever it is that brings stars together so fast, seems to break them up again, just as fast. Whether it’s convenience, career, or money that starts it, it rarely lasts too long.

Five years married is a pretty good record for stage and screen affairs. Ten years is something to open your eyes and look at twice. Twenty years together is impossible. It just doesn’t happen anymore! If it does, there’s no other way of looking at other than that it’s some kind of gift. A kind of magic that too few people know how to practice. Maybe you could even say that to be married twenty years by today’s new standards is God’s will.

How does a couple survive twenty years of plenty? How do they get through the times of frustration, despair, uncertainty, and keen disappointment with an unfailing intensity if it’s not some kind of magic - if it’s not Divine in some way?

This year, Jack Lord and his wife Marie have celebrated the magic number twenty. Twenty years married, affluent, no matte e what the problems have been. They have shared twenty years of each other’s life and worked harder every day for a new and brighter tomorrow. And Jack Lord attributes the whole thing , untarnished and untouched by time, doubt, or adversity to a Divine direction. And his story is one which offers all others a real kind of hope and inspiration. His twenty year love story shows that it can be done if, as Jack says, your lives are in perfect harmony.

The way Jack and Marie first met each other seems like it’s been copied right out from the pages of some ancient fairy-tale book. Once upon a time Jack Lord was out hunting in the deep dark woods, when he happened to stumble upon a quaint, old blue house. Jack went up to the house and peered through the broken windows. It was dirty, no one lived in it, and it had been broken up by vandals. When Jack looked in the windows he fell in love with it, and had the feeling that he must buy it. He searched for hours through the woods until he came upon the little old caretaker who gave him the name and owner of the blue house. Jack tried to reach the owner several tomes but couldn’t, and since he was on his way overseas, he decided to wait. When he arrived in Europe he wrote the owner of the house several times, but received no answer. When he returned to the states, he began telephoning until he reached the owner, which by t his tie had been haunting him every night in his dreams. It took quite a bit of convincing to make the unreceptive owner believe that the little blue house was the house of Jack Lord’s dreams. But he succeeded and soon found himself on his way to an appointment with her. 

When Jack rang the bell a beautiful girl answered, and it was a case of love at first sight. Her name - Marie de Narde. And Jack had a hard time believing that the girl who stood in front of him was not some kind of vision. But Marie wasn’t. She was real, and just as beautiful as she was real. Jack and Marie were married shortly after that in April 1952.

Jack was working part-time in those days and was attending New York University on a football scholarship. Marie, then a successful fashion designer, was earning much more than hr husband. Jack, whose real last name is Ryan, was filled with Irish pride and demanded that Marie stop working just as soon as he could support them both. 

Jack was a brilliant artist, with a yen to act, besides being a football star. so after he graduated from NYU he began to study acting in the evenings and went to work as an auto salesman in the daytime. Naturally, like any newly married young couple, certain sacrifices had to be made, and Marie, her sole purpose being to make her husband happy, made them.

In a matter of a few years Jack had done some plays on Broadway and had managed to get great reviews, but his great dream of being a really big star was as far out of sight as it had ever been. Long periods went by when Jack was without any work at all. But no matter how rough it seemed to get for both of them, Jack kept on hoping and pushing, and Marie stood right behind him all the way to give him the encouragement and strength that he needed.

Things went along rather bumpy career-wise for the first ten years of their marriage. But then Jack managed to get his biggest break in a TV series called Stoney Burke. The series, although a great show, was stuck in an impossible time slot, and was cancelled in a short time.

Marie never once allowed Jack to get down-hearted. As the years passed it came to look that Jack’s dream about being a really big star would never come true. Even though Jack did star in a few films. the parts that he really wanted were still being given to other people. But he remained undefeated, even though there was barely enough money in the bank to keep the family going any longer.

The good fairy must have been aware of all of this, because in 1968 Jack was asked to star in a pilot of a series called Hawaii Five-0. Jack and Marie were very reluctant to leave Hollywood at first, but after talking together, as they always did before making any decisions that might affect what they had build between them, decided to take the gamble. So they rode off into the sunset, toward the palm trees and clear air of Hawaii and lived happily ever after.

Jack is now a part owner of the series in addition to being its star. He is adored by the islanders, and the scenes which are filmed along the sights of Hawaii have become one of the biggest tourist attractions. There Jack and Marie no longer have to worry about money, poverty, or scrambling for parts and bits in shows and movies. Jack Lord is set financially for the rest of his life. He's finally seen his big dream come true. But when a person asks Jack what his most prized possession of all is, what his biggest success is, he breaks out in a kind of inspired poetry about his wife Marie.

"Well for one thing, I don’t believe it’s only love. There has been a Divine direction to everything Marie and I have shared from the beginning. Something as perfect as we have together couldn’t be a chance occurrence. Our life together is in perfect harmony."

During the nine or ten months that Jack is shooting the series Marie gets up every morning and makes him a home cooked breakfast. And when he comes home in the evening, too exhausted to do much more than bathe and go to bed, she has a home cooked dinner waiting for him on a serving tray. Throughout the rest of the day, while Jack is working, Marie sees to the other things like his mail, clothes and telephone calls.

As Marie puts it, "His interests are my interest. His goals my goals. It’s much more than love. Our marriage has worked because we have shared all the fortunes and heartaches, and because we have never lost faith no matter what."

There’s something special about that kind of relationship between two people. Show business is a hard business. There are so many things that can come between two people. There are so many times when it might look as if all faith has failed. Not too many people are able to withstand the rigors of a career which puts one constantly in the spotlight, never knowing whether or not it will be possible to stay there long enough to make some kind of a mark. And Jack Lord has had to be a stern self-disciplinarian. He has had to act like a complete professional to get where he is and stay there. And although none of us can ever really achieve perfection, Jack Lord tries in every area of his daily life. And he knows that a wife as devoted as Marie is, is nothing less than a gift from God.

"It’s incredible," he says. "I never realized that two people could really become one, but that’s what’s happened to us. It’s just a very special relationship," and he closes his eyes for a moment as if sending up a prayer of thanksgiving. "Marie is a beautiful person - inside and out. She’s everything to me - we live for each other."

Any husband can be easily hurt by his wife. In this age of fast and free love relationships there doesn’t seem to be that kind of solid bond between two people anymore. But God has been good to Jack Lord.

According to Jack, "A wife can make or break a man. She can hurt and nag and be selfish and possessive, but not my Marie. Her heart is as big as they come, even if it is housed in such a tiny body. god has been good to us. I’m not the easiest guy in the world to live with. I’ve always been just a little bit of a maverick...spoke what’s on my mind without being much of a diplomat. I have my weaknesses and faults, but Marie has steadfastly refused to see the flaws in me. She is my shelter. My haven.. She is everything in life to me."

This Lord and his lady have had a rare marriage. But Jack has always been a rare man. Success can and has confused many men. But this is a price that Jack Lord is not about to pay. Jack knows that if his success were to go to his head, as it has with many other great stars, he might lose Marie. And Marie is someone he just couldn’t imagine losing.

Instead of being part of the "scene" that so many actors and actresses become involved with, Jack and Marie have always been impartial to that kind of a life. "We’re very satisfied," Jack says. "I’m not reaching for anything socially or economically, but rather artistically. I’ll never stop. We have an ivory tower, our books, our art collection. We have no children, no relatives, and are totally dedicated to each other and to our marriage. Marie is all I care about in this world."

Maybe some of the light that surrounds Jack and Marie will fall on some of his fellow actors whose images are followed by so many young people. Jack neither smokes nor drinks and says "I believe that I have found the inner strength and, believe me, life has never been better."

Divine or not, magic or not, the Lords have something that’s rare, something of value. And it’s gone on for twenty years, and with the beliefs that both Jack and Marie hold, it will probably go on for another twenty...with God’s help.