Marriage by the Numbers

The women in that long-ago NEWSWEEK story who did marry reject the notion they'd have been losers if they hadn't found husbands. Virginia pediatrician Catherine Casey, 58, says she never obsessed about finding a mate; she met her husband while hiking the Badlands National Forest and married at 45. "There are so many women who do worry about getting married, but when you're happy with yourself, you find the right person," Casey says. Even the stories with bittersweet endings contain a fair share of happiness. At 33, Penny Stohn was so focused on her career that marriage seemed out of the question. But a year later she met a nice, funny guy named Ed Brouwer. They married and had three children. In 1999 Ed died of a liver ailment, and today Brouwer says she realizes that family, not work, is what constitutes a person's real legacy. "I reflect back on that article, and now I really do know what I was missing," she says.

Among the women in the story who remain single, two say they became preoccupied with something more important than spouse-hunting. Back then, Lillian Brown was a 50-year-old single woman who was adopting a child. Raising her daughter took most of her energy but was profoundly rewarding. Today Brown is a grandmother and contentedly single. "At this stage in my life, I certainly don't see any reason to be married," she says.

Before her appearance in the 1986 story, Nancy Rigg had been engaged to a wonderful man, but he'd drowned after going into a storm-swollen river to save a child. Since his death, Rigg has devoted herself to advocating for better swift-water rescue training. "Instead of giving birth to my own family, I gave birth to this [movement]," she says. She's had a half-dozen relationships, but says her boy-friends usually had a Consumer Reports mentality: they dated lots of women, were constantly looking for someone "better" and obsessed over potential incompatibilities instead of building a relationship. "There is a bit of wistfulness--I'd have loved to have married and had a family, but it didn't work out that way," says Rigg, now 56. "But I remain a hopeful romantic."

One striking aspect of this Where Are They Now exercise: none of these women divorced. Perhaps it's no coincidence. Statistically, people who marry at much higher-than-average ages don't have lower odds for divorce. But intuitively, some experts are starting to think that later-in-life marriages may have better chances of survival. "It makes sense--if you're getting married at a later age ... you'll have gone through a lot of relationships, and you'll know what you want [and] what you don't," says Elizabeth Gregory, director of the women's studies program at the University of Houston and the author of "The New Later Motherhood," to be published in 2007.

Despite book-club discussions of Maureen Dowd's "Are Men Necessary?" and much celebration of high-achieving single women like Condoleezza Rice, most unmarried women still say they hope for a husband someday. Lori White, a 48-year-old administrator at the University of Southern California, is strikingly attractive, has a good salary, owns a home, travels, has lots of friends and godchildren--but no husband. "People say that I'm picky," she says, citing the limited pool of African-American men who share her level of education. But even as women like White proclaim themselves happy with single life, many simultaneously say they'll stay in the market for a man. "Of course I want to get married," White says matter-of-factly. Across society, observers see all sorts of illustrations of just how deep the human marriage instinct seems to run. "Just look at gay couples today to see how important the [ability to] get married is for people," says Northwestern University psychologist Jay Lebow.

When today's single women discuss their marriage ambitions, however, they sound markedly different from women 20 years ago. "I just don't think the alarmist mentality is there anymore," says Bonnie Mas-lin, a New York psychologist who was quoted in the 1986 story. "I just don't see the franticness." Typical is Amy Russom, 35, a manager at a San Francisco software company. Even in 2006, people still routinely hit her with "How come you're not married?" "All I say is that I haven't met the right person yet." But she's confident she will, someday. Indeed, in the years since the "Marriage Crunch" hysteria abated, many women (and men, too) seem to have absorbed a simple, comforting mantra: if you want to get married, chances are high that sooner or later you probably will.