Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: SUNDAY, February 19, 1995 TAG: 9502210031
SECTION: HORIZON PAGE: G-1 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: CALVIN WOODWARD ASSOCIATED PRESS
DATELINE: WASHINGTON LENGTH: Medium
``You marry to get married, not because you want to change the world,'' she once said in a rare interview.
Except for splashes of unwelcome publicity, the latest over her new job scouting clients for an Israeli business park, Marianne Gingrich has lived outside the spotlight dominated by her husband, the Republican House speaker.
She's had a variety of jobs in urban planning, business consulting and home design while serving as Gingrich's confidante, a woman who tells him how his ideas seem to be playing outside Washington.
``She's a private person, for the most part,'' said Mel Steely, a former Gingrich aide and West Georgia College history professor who is writing a biography of the speaker.
``She's a very strong woman. But she's not one who wants her ideas foisted on the nation.''
Some of her jobs have been independent paths, others partnerships with her husband. That balance has become more relevant since she was hired by the Israel Export Development Co. to locate businesses in a free-trade zone championed by her husband.
The speaker denies the job involves government lobbying or any conflict. He said it's a private business and ``she ought to be let alone.''
Born and raised in Leetonia, Ohio, Marianne Ginther was one of four children, daughter of the late mayor, Harry Ginther, and a student at Kent State University when four students were shot and killed in a clash with the National Guard in a 1970 anti-war protest.
She went on to work in home design and was a county planning commissioner when Gingrich met her in 1980, shortly before his breakup with his first wife, Jackie.
Married a year later, Newt, now 51, and Marianne, 43, have endured a separation in the 1980s that she said ``improved our friendship,'' while building a life that put him at center stage.
``I've always seen her behind the scenes,'' said Republican Rep. Deborah Pryce of Ohio. ``She can be at a party or meeting or just around the Capitol building, and go her own way.''
Describing her as warm and friendly, Pryce said Marianne Gingrich avoids being consumed by the politics driving her husband and seems to spend plenty of time back in Georgia and visiting family in Ohio.
``I'm not sure they have a lot of time with each other,'' she said, citing his schedule.
But she said Marianne Gingrich has joined efforts to make Congress friendlier to family life by encouraging a less taxing schedule and more space for spouses on Capitol Hill.
The couple has not had children. Gingrich has two from his first marriage.
He has called Marianne a ``normal human being who's brilliant and wonderful and that stuff but'' - unlike him - ``she doesn't gear up every morning to be a Viking.''
In 1989, she told The Washington Post the marriage was ``off and on for some time.'' He put a precise number on the chances of it succeeding - 53 percent - and blamed his ``habits of dominance' for making him so argumentative.
Last fall, they bought their first home in his Atlanta-area district, moving up from a rented town house.
Her new job isn't the first of their relationship to raise eyebrows.
In the early 1980s, she managed a partnership that raised more than $100,000 from conservative investors to promote a book, ``Window of Opportunity,'' by the couple and another writer.
The special counsel for the House ethics committee looked into complaints that Newt Gingrich, then minority whip, might have violated limits on outside income and rules against gifts from those with an interest in legislation, and decided there was no case.
When the storm broke over Gingrich's new book deal, Marianne Gingrich pressed him to forgo the $4.5 million advance, her mother, Virginia Ginther, told the Los Angeles Times.
``He said they had talked it over and Marianne thought it was not good to take the money at this time,'' she said.
Friends describe Marianne Gingrich as a sometimes reluctant participant in Washington's social formalities, which have increased since Gingrich became speaker.
``My impression is that she regards this as an obligation,'' Steely said. ``She'd just as soon not fool with it.''
Lights bathed Newt Gingrich when he took the stage the night of a Republican bash last month celebrating the GOP majority in Congress. Mist from the band's dry ice gave him a surreal glow.
Marianne Gingrich stood to the side while the adulation poured on him. Eventually, they moved together and waved. It was an apt moment for a woman not always by her husband's side, but not often far away.
Keywords:
PROFILE
by CNB