Man, I knew my marriage was falling apart.
I just didn't know how to fix it. I felt like I would always be alone, even if I stayed married. At Focus on the Family's Hope Restored Marriage Intensive, we offer hope to couples in crisis so they can have the marriage they've always dreamed of. For the first time, I felt like my husband truly heard me. I've received some great tools from the counselors that have changed my life and my marriage. To begin the journey of finding health, go to HopeRestored.com today. Today's program is going to be for you, and I want to remind you right from the beginning that we have an outreach for couples in that situation called Hope Restored. One of the best things we're doing here at Focus, and we're doing a lot of good things. We have several locations for couples who can benefit from this intensive counseling effort, who, yes, may be on the brink of divorce. Hope Restored has better than an 81% post-two-year success rate.
So if you're struggling, allow us to help you with resources and tools to help your marriage improve. And our number is 800, the letter A in the word family, if you just want to call right now. Let's go ahead and hear a great conversation with two guests, Bill and Vicki Rose, who know from experience how God can change a heart.
And we spoke with them a while back, and it's quite a story. Let's get started on today's episode of Focus on the Family. Welcome to Focus on the Family.
Thank you so much. Thanks for having us here. Now, it is amazing, and we're going to unpack this story.
But you two have been married almost 40 years, and that says a lot right there. But there was turmoil. And I guess, Vicki, I want to turn to you and say, what did that turmoil look like? Give us a little taste of what the difficulty was, and then we'll build the story from there. Well, the difficulty leading up to separating. We had two young children, aged one and a half and four at that point.
And I was terrified. How would I live alone? How would I raise two children by myself? How would I afford to do anything?
How would I raise two children going back to work, which I did? It just involved a lot of fear. Now, you both grew up in New York, right, in Manhattan?
Yes. Bill, tell me about your background. What was it like growing up there? And you're from a Jewish family. Both of you are from Jewish families. Talk about your environment. What did you know about marriage?
How committed were you to the process and to the lifelong commitment? Well, I saw that my parents had a really good marriage. But my mom basically did everything to appease my dad. They were 25 years difference in age. My dad never got married until he was 55 and had me when he was 56. So clearly, I was never spoiled. Yeah, right.
Clearly. But I had a great childhood growing up, and my parents were culturally Jewish. We never went to Temple. As a matter of fact, the only time that I ever went to Temple was my dad wanted to take me to a World Series game, which back then occurred during the High Holy Days. And my mother said, the only way he's missing school is you're taking him to Temple in the morning. So I went to Temple with Dad, and we went to see the Yankees play the Cardinals.
So, yeah. And what was the highlight of your day that day? Manil had a home run. Oh, Barney Schultz at extra innings to win the game. Oh, man. Now, you are a baseball fanatic. You played, and that is great. That's part of your story.
Yes. Vicki, let me hear from you in terms of your childhood and how you were growing up in Manhattan. You kind of hit your stride, and you were in the fashion industry, right?
I did. Well, I always loved clothes. And so as I went to college, I thought, how can I turn that into something I can do for a living? And so I ended up working at Saks Fifth Avenue.
I was there for eight years, starting as a sales girl and working way up to buyer. Which is the goal in that environment, isn't it? Right. You both described yourselves as Type A people. What does that look like as we get to know you better? What does Type A for Vicki look like?
What was your day? Live life to the max, make every hour count, and I'm always right. That's what Type A means.
I get it. And Bill, how did you feel about that? Well, first of all, she was never right.
Oh, I don't know about that. Come on. Well, that was my Type A. And I just, I guess I like to be in control. And I think Vicki liked to be in control.
So we had two control people in the same environment. When you got married, did you ever talk in your premarital days about this? What attracted you to each other?
Did you see something that made you think, we could have something really special in this world with each other? We had none of that. We had no marriage counseling. We got married back in the Dark Ages.
I didn't know you did. We were married in 1977, so it was a long time ago. And we didn't talk about any of that.
I was afraid, I mean, I didn't even know about any of that. And we just thought dating was fun and life was fun. And we hung out with all these famous people and went to baseball games and sat in the owner's box. And that seemed like a great life.
And that was your kind of goal, wasn't it? Well, I thought if I got married, all these old childhood hurts and emptiness that had built up in my life would just go away. I thought marriage would solve that.
Talk about that. What were you coming into adulthood and marriage with? What was that, what many people call baggage?
Yeah, it was definitely baggage. I had grown up in a very strict environment in my home. My mother was a perfectionist, had anger issues. And then when I was 18, a week before high school graduation, she died. Suddenly, I felt free in some ways. But there was an emptiness that started to build. And I didn't know what that was. In my family, we didn't know or talk about grieving.
And so back in 1971, there was no cancer care support groups, at least that we knew about. So that, you know, was just pushed aside and we went on life as usual. And so that was a heavy thing. And I went into marriage thinking everything will be fine once I get married.
I'll have somebody who's going to love me, take care of me. And that was really all I thought about. In fact, in your book, Every Reason to Leave, you talked about your mom having you get on a scale and weighing. Yeah, it was part of the New York scene. I think my mother came from a very small town in upstate New York, Elmira. She used to say it was a better place to come from than to go to. And I think she had a great insecurity now as I look back about being in New York in somewhat of a social scene. And so outward appearance was everything. And so she wanted me to look perfect and be thin and dress.
I wasn't allowed out of the house in blue jeans. Wow. So that just created a lot of pressure for you.
A lot of pressure and a lot of if the outside's fine, it doesn't matter what the inside is feeling because we weren't allowed to have feelings or cry or be unhappy. Yeah. Bill, you're coming from this really strong, overindulged household, it sounds like. Yankee fans all the way. All the way.
All the way. But talk about how you met and you got these two type A personalities coming together. What was the scene like in which you met as young, young, young, young, young Bill and young Vicki? Well, I was walking with a friend of mine. Actually, his name was John Schnell.
I didn't forget. And I knew him from the high school I went to in New York. And I saw this girl walk out of my parents' building. And I said to him, she's pretty cute. I wonder who she is. And he said, I think her name is Vicki Gage. I said, how do you know that?
And he said, because, you know, I went to BU. She was at Pine Manor and they had run into each other. So the last name sounded familiar. So I asked my mom to find out if she was related to Sue Gage, who was a friend of my mom's. And it turned out to be her niece. And she said, but don't bother calling.
She's going out with this like hippie guy from the village. And so forget the whole thing. So I did. And then a year later, Sue Gage called back and said they broke up.
Have them call. And that's tight. That's information traveling quickly.
Right. And that's what happened. And he went out. And did you fall in love then? Or did it take time? Or what happened?
No, it was pretty quick. Our first date. Where did we go our first date? Our first date, Billy took me to this very fancy place in New York called Le Club. It's a private dinner dancing place. And it's actually where I first met George Steinbrenner.
Right. Was in Le Club. And then for our second date, I took her to a Ranger hockey game and then to the 21 Club for dinner. So you're pretty impressed with what your needs were. I was. I was. I was a good date. He was a great date. And I had been dating an artist, starving artist.
And we didn't go on dates like that. It was very. So that was impressing. It was very impressive. And then finally, you popped the question. George Steinbrenner, the owner of the Yankees, was that your wedding?
Is that right? He was. It was a small wedding, too. It was.
What happened? It was a small wedding, partly because, well, when I was 10, even though my family was Jewish, we joined a church. So my dream had always been to get married in a church. And I remember sitting with Billy and his family, having a conversation about where our wedding would take place right after we had become engaged. And his parents said, there is no way you two are getting married in a church. Everyone, Vicki, knows you're Jewish. And it would just be a total farce.
So, no, we will not hear of it. And so we ended up having a small wedding in my father's living room. And Billy wore his Yankee tie. Which must have impressed you. Not really, huh? But where did it start getting rough? What happened? Was it a year into it or quickly, days? How did you realize, okay, we might be in a bit of trouble relationally?
I would say within the first year, my emptiness and my unhappiness and our differences, we are so different. I love to go out and do things. And Billy loves to watch sports a lot on TV. And so as we started having a week, we'd both work all week, and then we'd get to weekends, and I'd want to go do something.
And Billy was really happy watching sports on TV. Just vegging. Right. And also realizing that this wasn't the answer. Well, let's talk about that because you mentioned that in your book. There's just this need to have certain needs met, and it wasn't there for you. And that was driving you to a conclusion that maybe he's the wrong guy or what? It was driving me to the conclusion that I was really unhappy. And maybe it was Billy, maybe it was, I wasn't sure.
But it was becoming clear to me that this thing that I thought would solve everything hadn't. Vicki, so many, and I would say men and women, but so many women are resonating with what you're saying because they're expecting more in the relationship. And guys, we tend to get away with not doing what we should do because we are all pretty comfortable watching sports on the weekend.
Not everybody, I know not everybody watches sports. But talk about that, Vicki. What was in your heart?
What was really missing at that time and all the needs that you had that you're expecting Bill to meet? Well, what I have come to learn now many, many, many years later, and we have been married almost 40 years, is that my husband and anyone else's husband was not created to meet all my needs and fill all my longings. Only Jesus Christ can do that. And so putting my husband and putting any husband in the position of being savior is not going to work.
And he's going to, I'm always going to be disappointed if that's who I think he's supposed to be. How did that manifest itself? I mean, it had to be more than just we're not spending time on the weekends together. What were some other things where Bill was not meeting that expectation? Sorry to do this to you, Bill. That's okay.
It's in the book. You're kind of speaking for all guys at this point. But Vicki, I think men struggle to understand, hey, I can't be all that to you.
I'm not your girlfriend. Right. And we didn't understand any of that then that we now understand a little better. Our communication was not great. We didn't know how to have a good fight. We didn't know how to fight fair. We just, you know, I blamed him. He blamed me. We just clammed up and, you know, walked out. We didn't have any tools. We had no tools whatsoever into how to have a good marriage.
Yeah. And a good marriage doesn't mean there's no disagree. And we also had misconceptions. A good marriage doesn't mean there's no disagreement. A good marriage doesn't mean we agree about everything because we still don't a lot of the time. A good marriage means that we respect one another, that we respect our differences. We work through our issues.
And we're still doing that at 40, almost 40 years. We don't have it all figured out. But one thing I do know is that Billy's not meant to be everything for me. And that's a real eye-opener. And a lot of newlyweds need to understand that.
And certainly pre-married couples, the sooner they understand that, the healthier their relationship is going to be. Now the additional challenge you had as a young 20-something couple was you didn't know the Lord. You're not in a Christian context at this point. You're in a very, what sounds like a very worldly context. You're living the high life.
You're going out to all the clubs and all of that. Could you see why the marriage wasn't working? And what did you do? Well, we separated in June of 1986. Separated? We separated. That was about five years after you were married? It was nine and a half years after we married. We separated in 1986. We were actually separated for a very short time prior to that and got back together. Not because we'd had any counseling or anything, but just because one romantic night we got back together. Nothing had really changed. One thing that has always been constant is our love for each other, my love for you. So that's always been there?
Yes. But you separated for a short time, came back together. Still, God was not in the picture.
Not in the picture. Then we went on to have children and when our children were one and a half and four, we separated. Billy had a terrible addiction to cocaine and other things and I couldn't live with that any longer. And the emptiness and the no relationship and it just, it was just a mess.
It was chaos. I owned a restaurant called the Sporting Club, which was one of the top places in the country rated by USA Today and New York Times. And you would go there, you'd be afraid not to go there because of who you might miss seeing.
I mean, we had every athlete that you could think of would come in, especially when they were visiting from out of town. And because of the hours that I was spending there, I'd get there around noontime and I'd probably get home around four or five in the morning. And a lot of it was, there were drugs there and there were women there and it was very easy to succumb to both. And Bill, it sounds like the emptiness Vicki was describing earlier was certainly felt in your life. And you were trying to find some fulfillment in things that didn't provide that. It was and I but I didn't know that at the time. I thought that these things were fulfilling.
And it took me a good three and a half years of doing this before I started to realize there was there's had to be more out there. You know, really, our hope today is to inspire people who are living in a similar place. It's not going to be the exact same place as Bill and Vicki, but they may be in a similar place where they're not really living up to their potential in their marriage.
And they know it. And we want to be able to provide that hope for you to inspire you to live each day better. And that's what we live and breathe to do here at Focus on the Family. So if you need help, call us and we want to be there for you. I want to pick up Bill where you left off there because we talked to Vicki about what those needs were for her as a young, newly married wife and what she was expecting from you. So you've got this thriving restaurant business in New York City.
It's taking all of your time. What were your needs and were you running from something? Well, I don't know that I was running from something.
It was a real power trip, this restaurant. And I was caught up in the whole glamour of the athletes and the women and the drugs. So I guess it was something I what I did was I put that before Vicki and before the marriage. And I just thought this would make me happier. And as the years went on, I realized that was just not the truth. Yeah. Boy, so many people could fill in the blank with whatever they're doing, particularly men, whether it's that title, whatever vocationally they're doing, they're not coming home at night because it's easier to be at the office.
It's easier to earn the money and to justify the time spent there. Vicki, at this time, you're a single mom. What did that jungle look like for you?
You're trying to sort out where do I go? I mean, what was your life like? My life was completely around the kids.
And I also went back to work a year after we separated Macy's, R.H. Macy and Company as a corporate buyer. So the chaos increased because then there was a nanny and, you know, we had a dog and I was running off to work every day and two very young children. And so the life was very chaotic. And I didn't have any idea how to fix that.
Right. I just kept running in a sense, kept running to do the next thing. And during the season, Vicki was Bill in your life at all or was the separation such that you just lived your life and he was out there and not part of any of it?
A little of both. Billy would come one night a week. He'd bring McDonald's for the kids. And on that night was the night that I would be attending a 12-step meeting or have dinner with a friend. And so we didn't have very much connection except when we needed to talk something about the children. My life was so much about the kids, but also who am I?
What am I supposed to be doing now with my life? My husband's gone. We're separated. We're not divorced. My parents sat me down. My father and stepmother sat me down one evening and said, we saw Billy at a restaurant with another girl and he's going to have an easy time finding someone. But you're not because you're a woman and you have two children.
And so that was really blew me away. I didn't feel very much like parental support. And I didn't know what I was going to do with myself. I didn't.
I was just my brain was circling around and around and around all the time. What am I going to do? Am I going to find another husband, somebody to help me raise these kids?
How am I going to do this? Because I really didn't know how to raise the children. And in that context, what did you turn to? And so a couple of friends decided they'd set me up with a date. And so I went out and actually my mother-in-law encouraged me to have an affair.
She said that would make everything better. So I did. And it definitely didn't. And I realized at that point that that was definitely not the answer. One of these other dates that someone fixed me up with had lines of cocaine. And this was back in the late 80s where people still thought that was a fun thing to do. And so I started doing that too. Vicki, where did the Lord begin to enter into this? I mean, Bill's not living with you. You've got two young kids. Did you all of a sudden wake up and say, we need more God in our life?
No. The day after we separated, I started attending a 12-step program. And I don't know if you're familiar with it, but through the process of the steps, it talks about prayer and meditation and having a higher power. And so I started to pray.
And I had grown up in the church, so I started to go back to the church, even though it wasn't a Bible teaching church. And a year and a half into our separation, I was invited to a dinner party by Mrs. Arthur S. DeMoss, Nancy Lee DeMoss' mom. There in New York?
In New York City. It was at the Waldorf Astoria. It was a beautiful gold-inscribed invitation that arrived. It said, Mrs. Arthur S. DeMoss invites you to meet and hear. So I started to pray. Here, Secretary of the Interior and his wife, Donald and Barbara Hodel, and hear about Christianity and the world today. And in the lower corner of the invitation, it said Black Tie.
And here I am, a single mom with not much to do. And a friend who worked for Mrs. DeMoss had sent me this invitation. And so I accepted.
I said, I'm going because I can get dressed up and go out and have a fun night. And in fact, I had an amazing night because I heard the gospel presentation that night, and God had prepared my heart through working through these 12 steps and prayer. And I heard that God loved me and had a plan for my life, but that I was separated from God by what the Bible calls sin. And I thought, well, I haven't killed anyone, including my husband, who I would have liked to have.
But it was explained to me that sin was anything like worry or gossip or fear or envy. And I knew I qualified. And so that God loved me, that I was separated from him, but that Jesus Christ was God's only provision for man's sin, including mine, that his shed blood provided the atonement, the forgiveness for all my sins. And simply, it was offered that we could just receive him. They told us that it says in the Bible to those who receive him, he gives the right to become children of God.
And so that night at that dinner party with 900 people in the grand ballroom of the Waldorf Astoria Hotel in New York City, I prayed and asked Jesus Christ to take over my life to make me the person he created me to be. That's exciting because of the backstory on that. Of course, Don served here on the board of Focus on the Family years after this. And eventually was the interim president after Dr. Dobson stepped down from that role and before I was appointed into that role. So Don and his late wife, Barbara, have been terrific friends of Focus on the Family.
But that's how Bob weaves it together. And to us. We got to meet with them two or three or four times after that dinner. And we visited them a couple times. So they've been so dear to us, because what they spoke that night and their story had things in it that matched my story. You know, this is really intriguing. And we've gotten to that point where we're talking about how the Lord has tapped you on the shoulder, Vicki, you still got Bill, who's doing cocaine and other things in the restaurant.
And you're not cleaning this either. You know, you've got your issues that you've been dealing with. And this is where people connect. Because if I could be so bold, your guys lives were a mess, a mess, spiritually speaking, every and I want to come back and talk about that, and how the Lord began to, in essence, clean your heart and clean your house.
And I think people will really benefit from that. Can we come back and talk about that? Sure.
Absolutely. What a conversation with Bill and Vicki Rose on today's episode of Focus on the Family. And I'm sure that you've connected with them at some level, as you've heard them sharing their story. Now that's captured in Vicki Rose's book, Every Reason to Leave and Why We Choose to Stay Together. It's an excellent book, inspiring and their true story, as written from Vicki's perspective. It offers a lot of the scriptures that helped carry her through the tough times.
Please request that book when you get in touch with us. And we'll send that to you for a gift of any amount to focus on the family. We encourage you to support the ministry monthly if you can do that.
If you're inspired by what God is doing through the ministry to help save marriages and many other things, I hope you'll be a part of it. And if you're only able to make a one-time gift right now, we still will send you the book as our way of saying thank you. Also, when you call, if you need help in your marriage, you can request a consultation with one of our counselors.
It's absolutely free. Take advantage of that. Or find out more about Hope Restored, the intensive marriage program that we mentioned at the top of the program. Donate and get help by calling our number 800-232-6459-800, the letter A in the word family, or look for the links in the episode notes. On behalf of Jim Daly and the entire team, I'm John Fuller, inviting you back next time as we continue the conversation with Bill and Vicki, and once again, help you and your family thrive in Christ. Thank you.
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