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Neither admits to being on the lookout for a new spouse, and neither remembers exactly how that first meeting occurred, but one thing Marylyn Ginsburg and Chuck Klaus agree on is they were at the same place at the same time.
That place was Syracuse, New York, where she was attending a concert sponsored by an organization on whose board she served, and he was attending that same concert as a music critic.
“Once I saw Marilyn, this nice-looking blonde lady, I forgot to take notes,” Klaus admitted during a dual interview in her Rancho Palos Verdes home, a home they’ve shared during the nearly three years since they married on July 11, 2009 at Wayfarers Chapel.
And come Feb. 12, they will be honored at the Valentine Ball, which celebrates couples who have contributed their time, talent and resources to the Norris Theater for the Performing Arts. (Marylyn has filled several roles and provided major financial aid to sustain and invigor the community’s theatrical life for at least the past 20 years.) She has also played a major part in the Peninsula’s artistic life with her longstanding volunteer activities at the Palos Verdes Art Center.
The couple will receive the Kenneth T. Norris, Jr. “Key to Your Heart” award at a special presentation during this 23rd annual Norris gala at the Terranea Resort that this year is co-chaired by Myla Azer and Marise Boland supported by a 30-member committee.
“The Valentine Ball is always one of the premier benefits in Palos Verdes,” said Norris President Dave Diestel, who added, “that the event has raised nearly $2 million for the Norris Center in the past 22 years.”
This year’s theme, “Night at the Louvre,” will bring a French flair to the evening that includes cocktails, dinner, dancing, an auction and opportunity drawings.
Terranea is a premier sponsor and Clix Portrait Studios, also a sponsor, will be taking souvenir photos of all guests, according Norris officials. Media sponsors include “Peninsula People,” “Daily Breeze,” “Palos Verdes Peninsula News” and “Southbay.”
Honorees Marylyn and Chuck are no strangers to awards. They were honored in 2011 by Marymount College at an event at the Warner Grand Theatre in San Pedro, and Marylyn was honored as a Legend by the Volunteer Center last May.
But long before that litany of awards over the years for her service to the arts, Marylyn was growing up poor and fatherless near Mechanicville in upstate New York. “We were almost destitute,” she said. With her two siblings, she said, “we had to learn how to care for ourselves. Our mother went to work as a teacher and then a secretary.”
Meanwhile, in the Midwest, Chuck was growing up as an adopted child in a comfortable home in Evergreen Park, Ill.
What they had in common even then, it seems, was their passion for the arts: she, the fine arts, and he, music. As valedictorian of her high school, Marylyn won a four-year scholarship to Syracuse University where she earned a B.F.A. in Arts Education, staying on to obtain an M.F.A. in the same field.
Around this time, Chuck in Illinois skipped a couple grades in elementary school, took up the accordion at the behest of his parents and started collecting classical records. He was so taken up with music, he said, that by the time he graduated from high school, he’s voted the “Outstanding Choral Student.”
At Northern Illinois University in DeKalb, he majored in speech communications, and once graduated, started a career in radio, which finally took him to Syracuse where he produced a variety of music programs for the radio station there and taught at Syracuse University for nearly 20 years before joining the “Syracuse Post Standard” as Drama and Music critic.
During this period, Marylyn had already been in California for several years, having moved there with two Syracuse students, one of whom she married in 1960. After settling in the South Bay, she taught art, volunteered at the Art Center and greeted three sons between 1963 and 1966. She was divorced in 1978.
Once divorced after 18 years of marriage, “I wanted to do so many things that I hadn’t been able to do,” Marylyn said, “so I started with a survey course in law, and ended up liking it so much that I ended up taking the baby bar exam four years later. It’s really important to me to have new challenges,” she explained.
The list of awards, community involvement and international project involvement fills more than one page (in small type), which validates her intention to deal with a wide assortment of new opportunities, but at the very top are the arts and education. “These have been my primary interests,” she said. Certainly her 20-year commitment to the Norris confirms the high level of financial and personal dedication she has brought to those causes.
As for education, she said her work with Rotary has given her the opportunity to support a small town in Mexico and personally support a student there since she was a junior in high school. “She’s now a junior in college, and we’re planning on seeing her in the spring,” she beamed.
As for the courtship, both agree it was “slow moving”—probably more than a year, according to their recollections. She’d been divorced a long time and was enjoying a very successful business career and satisfying philanthropic commitments on the Peninsula and overseas—and even a couple serious relationships. And he, divorced about five years, was still working and well established as a music and drama critic for the Syracuse newspaper.
But those emails, which had started so casually and so briefly after she returned to California, kept getting longer and longer, Marylyn said. “In one of them, I just happened to say, ‘Drop by sometime.’”
And he did.
Marylyn and Chuck are unstinting in their praise of the other. “We shared the same interests. Here was this handsome man who was smart—and sweet,” she said. “My husband is the very best man in the entire world,” she added.
“Here is this good-looking lady,” intoned Chuck, “who is a lifelong learner. I am so impressed with the things she’s done, her ability to accomplish what she’s done. And we’re really having fun.”
“As for getting married, I only had two requirements of him,” Marylyn added. “He had to love my two cats, and he had to join Rotary.”
For a man who left a blooming career and a good reputation in Syracuse, it seems that Chuck Klaus must have been willing to love much more than a couple cats and Rotary. PEN
To buy tickets or for further information about the Valentine Ball on Feb. 12, call 310-641-9606.
