Barbara Paer and Shelley Rubin

Barbara Paer and Shelley Rubin

Interview transcript

Rubin: How did you meet my father?

Paer: I get a phone call. Barbara I’ve got somebody I would like you to meet. I said, I’m not interested in meeting anybody. I said, I have plans of my own right now. I’m gonna be married tomorrow’s my engagement party. So my mother heard the conversation on the phone while I was talking and my mother looks at me and says, Big deal Barbara go have a drink with the man, what could be so terrible. Well of course, when Ben came into the house, my mother goes, Ohhhh. I got my coat on, he seemed like a very nice man, and we went out. And we never stopped talking until I think four o’clock in the morning. That was the half hour meeting that we were gonna have. And I said, Look this is ridiculous I said I have an engagement party tomorrow. This is just not right theres something wrong with this whole set up here and he says, You’re right, he said what’s your name gonna be? he says Frost is a much nicer name. I said, What are you saying? Are you proposing to me tonight, now? He said, Yes. I don’t want you to go to an engagement party. I want you to marry me.

Went to the party and then I went home and called up my so called husband to be and I told him I can’t go through with it I’m sorry and that was it. Six months later your father and I were married.