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Barry Manilow's Secrect Wife!
June 1, 2000
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SINGER Barry Manilow has been a lifelong confirmed bachelor, as far as his adoring fans are concerned.
But a Gossip Magazine investigation has uncovered a woman from his long forgotten past: Barry's ex- wife, Susan Deixler, the high school sweetheart he married and then callously dumped when the bright lights of stardom beckoned.
"I never remarried," she says wistfully, 34 years later. "I've gotten on with my life. I wish him well and he wishes me well."
Today Susan, 55, is a holistic healer, who drives an old Subaru and treats patients with acupressure and chiropractic methods at her modest home with peeling paint outside Point Reyes, Calif. Her daughter by another man, Pauline, 26, lives nearby. She also has a son Danny.
And for decades Manilow, 53, has kept her whereabouts a secret from all except his closest confidants. As the singer's fame, wealth and legions of fans grew, Susan became a forgotten footnote on a marriage clerk's dusty ledger.
But in the early 1960s they were just two kids from Brooklyn who fell in love at Eastern District High.
Manilow makes a fleeting reference to Susan in his 1987 autobiography "Sweet Life," but doesn't name her. He remembers Susan as "adorable, small with great legs and a voluptuous figure."
Then a shy, poor boy from a rough neighborhood, Manilow longed to be a singer. But the one thing he wanted more was for Susan, with "jet-black hair, dark brown eyes and a smile that lit up the room" to love him as he loved her.
After many awkward dates and late-night strolls along the East river, just across from the romantic lights of Manhattan where Manilow hoped to be a star one day, they fell in love, he reveals in his book, published by McGraw-Hill.
"I couldn't believe it when she seemed to fall for me as hard as I fell for her."
The two were married first before a justice of the peace and then, at their parent's insistence, before a rabbi. Susan chose Joan De Santis, who had been her best friend since grade school, to be her bridesmaid.
Sadly, Joan has since passed away. But her mother Anne De Santis remembers the happy event like it was yesterday.
"Susan asked Joan to be her bridesmaid because they were such good friends," she says. "They were incredibly excited because it was to be the first wedding in their group of friends.
"They were giggly and so full of life and hope for the future. It was a wonderful time.
"They went to Lord & Taylor's on Fifth Avenue together to get dresses and spent just about every penny they had saved. I remember Joan bought a lovely green velvet dress. She was so pretty and so excited.
"Susan was such a pretty bride. She had beautiful jet-black hair and was so happy. When I think back, it's doubly sad that Barry walked out on Susan and broke her heart. I don't think she ever recovered from the blow."
But Manilow says the marriage was doomed from the start. "Even my friends thought I was rushing into it," he later admitted.
Less than a year after tying the knot, Manilow grew restless. He was getting work in small off-Broadway theaters.
He decided he was miserable being tied down at age 21 and couldn't bear the thought of an ordinary life "with a picket fence on Long Island," says a source.
So he abruptly left Susan, telling her he was going on "this wondrous musical adventure that I saw within my reach."
With those words, Manilow walked out on the "perfect wife" while she cried in disbelief.
"She reacted badly, of course," he said. Angry and hurt, Susan filed for an annulment, which would basically mean the marriage never happened.
When Manilow came back the next day with a pal's truck to clear out the apartment, he discovered Susan had changed the locks on the door.
When he called from a phone booth Susan was "a very distant and hurt woman." She said he could have his clothes, but nothing else, not even his precious piano. Though in the end she did relent and let him have it.
"Joan and Susan talked on the phone all the time during that period," De Santis says. "Susan told Joan that she was very happy. She had gotten on with her life."
On Jan. 6, 1966, the annulment decree was signed and they were both single again.
In the 1970s, Barry's star began to rise after he got a job playing piano in a gay bathhouse in New York with Bette Midler.
Things used to get so wild during performances at the Continental Baths that Manilow once stripped nude and jumped into the pool with a cavorting crowd of gay men in their birthday suits.
"Have you ever seen a thousand naked men with party hats on?" asked Manilow, recalling his hungry years.
"All during the show, people kept passing drinks and joints up to me."
As the party roared into the night, the spectators beckoned the singer to join them in the pool.
"I was thinking: 'I'd love to lose my inhibitions and jump in with the rest of them, but it goes against everything in me.'"
But he finally gave in, stripped off his tux and jumped in.
He went on to top the charts with songs such as "Mandy," "Copacabana" and "I Write The Songs."
Although he's been linked with women, he never remarried.
These days he owns several homes and leads an elegant lifestyle made up of only the finest foods, clothes, cars and furnishings.
"He's Mister Smoking Jacket and Velvet Slippers," says a friend.
"Barry loves to entertain with small dinner parties in his gorgeous mansion in Woodland Hills, always elegantly catered and served meticulously by his longtime staff on the finest china, crystal and silver."
But even though Susan lives a much more modest lifestyle than the one she could have had as Mrs. Manilow, she doesn't begrudge him and doesn't have a bad word to say about her first love.
"I bear him no animosity," she says. "It's a wonderful gift that he has, and he's sharing it with the world."
http://gossipmagazine.com/ManageArticle.asp?C=10&A=86
