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In this Valentine’s Day bonus episode of Excuse My Grandma, Grandma and Poppy sit down to answer heartfelt questions from Kim about love, marriage, and what it really takes to stay together through the years. From first impressions to lifelong commitment, they share honest stories, gentle advice, and the little lessons they’ve learned along the way.Follow us onInstagram @excusemygrandma @kimmursteinTikTok @excusemygrandma and @excusemygrandmapod Watch on YouTubeSpotify
In this Valentine’s Day bonus episode of Excuse My Grandma, Grandma and Poppy sit down to answer heartfelt questions from Kim about love, marriage, and what it really takes to stay together through the years. From first impressions to lifelong commitment, they share honest stories, gentle advice, and the little lessons they’ve learned along the way.
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Instagram @excusemygrandma @kimmurstein
TikTok @excusemygrandma and @excusemygrandmapod
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Grandma Gail is full of wisdom... even if Kim doesn't always take it to heart. Every week, the granddaughter/grandmother duo share stories, chat about their lives, discuss pop culture, and unpack the generational differences of dating, sex, relationships, and more. Listen on Spotify, Apple or wherever you get your podcasts. Watch the show in full on YouTube and follow @excusemygrandma on TikTok and Instagram to keep tabs on what’s happening in their lives between episodes.
Inquiries: team@excusemygrandma.com.
This episode is brought to you by Prime. Obsession is in session, and this summer, Prime originals have everything you want. Steamy romances, irresistible love stories, and the book to screen favorites you've already read twice. Off Campus, Elle, Every Year After, The Love Hypothesis, Sterling Point, and more. Slow burns, second chances, chemistry you can feel through the screen.
Speaker 1:Your next obsession is waiting. Watch only on prime.
Speaker 2:We're married sixty two years. Coming be 63.
Speaker 3:Be 63 in September.
Speaker 4:Poppy, how long has it actually felt like?
Speaker 2:A hundred and sixty.
Speaker 3:My whole life.
Speaker 4:Welcome back to Excuse My Grandma. It's Kim and my cohost. Grandma Gail. And we have Poppy David here with us.
Speaker 3:I'm so happy to be with my favorite two people.
Speaker 4:And we're doing that's cute. We are doing a very special little Valentine's Day episode and I hope everyone enjoys learning about Grandma and Poppy's love story.
Speaker 2:We don't remember ever being single. I mean forget it.
Speaker 3:I never was single.
Speaker 4:I know. Even with all the changes of life like kids and careers and where you lived, what part of your relationship never really changed?
Speaker 2:Well I don't think anything really changed. We were always good to one another. We worked things out. We had differences over many things. But you know what?
Speaker 2:They weren't important differences.
Speaker 3:No, I don't think the relationship has changed one bit. I still love her as much, I still respect her as much and we still share the same values on anything that's important.
Speaker 2:Oh my god, how much am I giving him for that answer? I know,
Speaker 4:what the heck, you better be paying him a ton.
Speaker 2:I am.
Speaker 4:What were your first impressions of each other?
Speaker 2:Oh gosh. Well, we didn't have a we had a rocky start.
Speaker 3:No, we had a good start.
Speaker 2:Had a couple of good dates. We had a couple of good dates in the beginning. I think one or two, but the third date wasn't so good. We went to a show that
Speaker 3:was Oh, dad. Poor dad. Mama's hung you in the closet, and I'm feeling so sad.
Speaker 2:And it was written by somebody who
Speaker 3:went was written college by Leonard with Coppock for the Harvard Hasty Pudding show in Cambridge and they were performing it in a small theater in Greenwich Village.
Speaker 2:So we went.
Speaker 3:So we went.
Speaker 2:And halfway through the show I must have turned to him and said, I
Speaker 3:don't think You said this is the stupidest thing I've ever seen.
Speaker 2:Correct. Correct. I was enjoying it. No, you weren't really enjoying No, thought it was. It was that he was a classmate of yours.
Speaker 3:He wasn't a classmate.
Speaker 2:Well, was close to your class, but whatever.
Speaker 3:So anyway, when I got home, my parents said, How was the day? I said, she's very nice, she's beautiful, I like her, but she's not very bright. She didn't understand the show one bit. So That was that's it.
Speaker 2:I didn't hear from men. We all carried on with our lives.
Speaker 3:Two weeks later,
Speaker 2:maybe three weeks.
Speaker 3:Two or three weeks later, my parents went to see the show. They came home. My mother said it was really very good. My father said it was the stupidest thing he ever saw. He didn't understand one bit of it.
Speaker 3:So I said, maybe the light bulb went off. I said, I knew my father wasn't stupid. Maybe I misjudged Gail.
Speaker 2:Well, that was So
Speaker 3:I called her again, and that was it.
Speaker 2:Well, it wasn't it. I said, I thought you had died. Because I couldn't imagine somebody not calling back. In those days, if you liked somebody, you called them back right away. I mean, we didn't text.
Speaker 2:We didn't do any of those things. You picked up the phone and said, what are you doing the next we were both in school at the time. What were you doing over the weekend? And I hadn't heard from him so I figured he died. But then I think eight months later
Speaker 3:We got over that.
Speaker 2:We got over and eight months later we got married.
Speaker 4:At that point in your life were you like carefree? Were you stressed? Like what was going on?
Speaker 3:Oh we were both in school.
Speaker 2:We were both in school. I was carefree. He was in graduate school so he wasn't as as he was a little more stressed than I but you know what? I had no problems. You know, it was the sixties and it was the early sixties.
Speaker 2:We really were in a
Speaker 3:It was an age of innocence.
Speaker 2:Exactly. We were just getting out of the age of innocence. By the mid sixties, it was a mess already. But by the early sixties, we were still enjoying what we thought was an ideal society.
Speaker 3:Yeah, it was a boom period in the country.
Speaker 2:Right. And we had a good time. Our, you know, we both lived in the suburbs. We didn't see anything. We were happy.
Speaker 2:We were happy idiots. Think we were really happy idiots. I think that's a good
Speaker 4:way to be, being a happy idiot.
Speaker 2:Well, I think for a time. I think For a you wake up after a while to reality. But at the moment when we was first you know going
Speaker 3:We out married, we were very young and so were all our friends and they all got married.
Speaker 2:Yeah but they all got divorced except for us.
Speaker 3:That's something else but they all got married at the
Speaker 2:Well same that was the social mores of the time.
Speaker 4:What were your first impressions of each other?
Speaker 2:I thought he was very smart. He was a good athlete. And I always said to my mother, I need to marry somebody smart. I don't know why I said that. I should have said other things, but that was important to me at the time and he fit the bill.
Speaker 2:And we probably, for the first thirty years of our marriage, never had a conversation that mattered that was intellectual.
Speaker 4:Remind me, how did the proposal happen?
Speaker 2:It was my birthday, was We my 20 went to the Americana Hotel which is no longer in existence now the Sheridan. I passed it the other day when I was going down.
Speaker 3:But they still have a star in the ballroom where I it
Speaker 2:think we were going to see some kind of entertainment I don't even remember who it was. Wait what do
Speaker 4:you mean a star?
Speaker 2:He's teasing, he's teasing,
Speaker 3:was a star for
Speaker 2:us because
Speaker 3:that's where we got engaged.
Speaker 4:Got it.
Speaker 3:So I proposed to her during dinner and her reaction was I think I have to go to the ladies room after you said yes.
Speaker 4:I never heard that. Yeah well
Speaker 2:it wasn't it was you know you get very nervous I think it was more nerves than anything else.
Speaker 4:But you said yes first?
Speaker 3:Yes.
Speaker 4:Okay. I said yes. That's better than running to the ladies room No, without an
Speaker 3:no. Definitely said yes.
Speaker 4:Yeah. What do you remember most
Speaker 2:about your wedding day? Oh gosh it was raining And I was thinking about my hair. You know, that's the usual conversation I have with you about the hair going out the way in the rain and then being on the screen. I said, oh no, my hair is gonna fall. But it cleared off right before we had to get married and we were married at the famous Plaza Hotel and it was so beautiful.
Speaker 3:And I was very busy because I took my last graduate school exam that morning so I really most of the day wasn't even thinking about the wedding.
Speaker 4:Crazy to have that much going on in one day.
Speaker 3:That's why I was never single.
Speaker 2:That's why you That's were why about the wedding. Yes. You were stressed about taking an exam.
Speaker 3:Well the wedding I knew was going to be something good.
Speaker 4:That's cute. What do you think makes a marriage work? Compromise.
Speaker 3:Respect for each other.
Speaker 2:More compromise. What do you
Speaker 4:think people misunderstand about marriage?
Speaker 2:I think they think that it's gonna be perfect every day and it's not. You know there's some days you wanna wring your partner's neck because you can't stand what they're saying or what they're doing but you know what if you work it through you realize you know there are differences of opinions and you have to respect it. And sometimes you just have to, as I've often said to you, take a little walk outside, walk around the block, cool off, and then come back. And, don't harp on small things. Fight about the big things.
Speaker 2:Don't fight about anything minor.
Speaker 4:Poppy, do you think you do most of the talking or grandma does most of the talking in your relationship?
Speaker 2:Grandma does most of the talking.
Speaker 3:I think she talks more than I do.
Speaker 2:But he was the boss. He used to say
Speaker 3:to himself. Yeah. Anybody who believes that.
Speaker 2:I used to say
Speaker 3:No, no, a good marriage is mutual. You know, you each have to be able to speak up, have your opinions, they may always they may not always agree, but you have to respect the other one's opinion.
Speaker 2:I always say Poppy was deciding whether we should invade Vietnam, and I was deciding what
Speaker 3:we Where should should go for dinner?
Speaker 2:Where should we go for dinner and what we should do with the children. You separate your your decision makings. What advice would you give to people who are still looking for their grandma or Poppy, their match? There's a match out there for everybody and don't only think it's one person. If one person disappoints you or if all of a sudden you're in a relationship and you see that it's not going in the right direction, back off.
Speaker 2:I mean, everybody gets very involved now. They get married much later, so you have much more time. You're much more mature. I mean, we are friends and our and I would even say we weren't mature at the time. We were babies right out of school.
Speaker 2:We went from our parents' homes to our our own home. And so today, it's a very different time. And you're but you you should take your time. Look at values. Look and see if you're going on the same path.
Speaker 2:If you want the same things, if there are major major differences, please decide that before you go and make the final step because you know what? The first mistake is is the easiest thing to walk away from. You don't have nothing is has to be written down and be completely firm in in what would you say? It's not written in blood. That's that's the phrase.
Speaker 3:No. And nobody is 100% perfect.
Speaker 2:Except for you.
Speaker 3:Maybe you're 99.
Speaker 2:Right. But that's really true.
Speaker 3:And you're clearly 98. You're almost there.
Speaker 2:Right. I'm working on it.
Speaker 3:Now the other thing is, besides respect, you want to have shared values. And one of the ways you can look at that is look at your prospective mate's family because a lot of their values are formed from their families. And that was one of the strengths of ours is both of our families had very solid values. Actually we met because I knew part of her family my whole life.
Speaker 2:Well that can work for some and not always for others. No, can't happen have lot. That's very unusual. Yeah. So I think you make your own decisions now on your own values and what you've developed as a an individual.
Speaker 2:You're much more mature now. You're starting out. Most of you have careers. So just think about how you can join together and what you can do together as a couple. What does love look like to you right now?
Speaker 2:Old age. Old age and you know what happens is love is different. It takes on different aspects of every different part of your life. When you're first married, you're in a honeymoon phase. When you're in children, you're in a stressful time.
Speaker 2:When you're in retirement, you're doing things that both of you probably like to do together or that you do things that you enjoy like travel or going on adventures. And then when you get older in the golden years, you support each other because not every day is a picnic and, might be financially in a better position as you get older but not as in good health. So you have to go through those phases. Or all of a sudden one of you wants to play cards all day long the other one
Speaker 3:Which one could that be?
Speaker 2:And the other one wants to go out and play golf. So I think what happens is you have to you know what? You compromise again. And you have a good time at each time in your life, as long as everybody is on the same page on the major issues life is good. What's something you do for each
Speaker 4:other that makes you feel the most loved big or small?
Speaker 2:I think we think about each other what we would like our likes and dislikes.
Speaker 3:Yes, a lot
Speaker 2:of You know that something is gonna aggravate him.
Speaker 3:Show your love.
Speaker 2:Exactly. I'm not gonna pour garlic on his meat if he know if I know he doesn't like it. So I mean, you know, it's it's it's what you've seen over the years by living together being together and you try to avoid the things that you know aggravate the person it's it's not worth it.
Speaker 4:Any habit you secretly find cute about the other person or more annoying?
Speaker 2:No I don't think any habits. Think we've grown together that we've almost we've developed the habits together. Exactly. We're developing the same habits so we can't even argue anymore we know what the other one is gonna say before we even finish the sentence and that's what a marriage is all about finishing the other person's sentence.
Speaker 3:What
Speaker 4:keeps you choosing each other? Where are we going?
Speaker 2:Who's taking you You
Speaker 4:make the choice.
Speaker 2:No we don't make a choice anymore. We're in it. In it till the end. We have no more choices. We're not going anywhere.
Speaker 2:I'm not packing my bags and he's not packing his bag.
Speaker 4:Tell each other one thing about each other that you've never told them.
Speaker 2:Oh I don't think there's anything.
Speaker 3:Don't think there's anything. After sixty two years there's no secrets.
Speaker 2:Alright I can I think of one thing I don't like that you don't like to go swimming with me?
Speaker 3:When was the last time you swam?
Speaker 2:Well that doesn't matter. Twenty years ago I was annoyed that you didn't go swimming with me.
Speaker 4:Grandma I've never seen you swim ever.
Speaker 2:Oh I used to swim. Maybe twenty years he doesn't want to go swimming so now we don't go swimming. Now that's
Speaker 3:When I swam forty years ago Yeah. You did in Greenwich, I used to swim laps Right. And you would never go in.
Speaker 2:I know. But never
Speaker 3:So we go through cycles.
Speaker 2:That's a good word. We're in this we're in a no swimming cycle.
Speaker 4:If you're in some sort of argument who says I'm sorry first.
Speaker 2:We never had we don't have those
Speaker 3:kind I don't think we've ever had a big argument.
Speaker 2:We don't have those kind of arguments.
Speaker 4:You've never had to say I'm sorry?
Speaker 2:No. No. No. I don't think so.
Speaker 3:I don't think so either.
Speaker 2:I mean sometimes we can get annoyed with each other but we'll slam a door but then then we'll come back
Speaker 3:in the room. I never slammed you.
Speaker 2:Oh, I slammed a lot
Speaker 3:of doors.
Speaker 4:Poppy, what has it been like for you to watch grandma and I work together for Excuse My Grandma?
Speaker 3:I think it's great. I am so proud of the two of you. I can't stop telling everybody I know about it.
Speaker 2:He's our best publicist.
Speaker 3:Yeah. That's think it's so wonderful. I think it's good for you Kim and I think it's great for Grandma.
Speaker 4:What impression did you have of me as a child that is either the same as now or different?
Speaker 2:I think you're exactly the same. Yep. Always making up a story, always living in fantasy world.
Speaker 3:People basically don't change that much. Right. They mature but it's the same basic you know traits and characteristics.
Speaker 4:Anything you would do differently in these last sixty three years of marriage?
Speaker 2:Well, I think if I had to do it differently, and this is serious, I think I would get married a little later. Not a different person, but maybe I would instead of 21, maybe I would have pushed it to '25, '26 and done and worked but in the time when we got married most girls went to school, to college and didn't work and got married so it was a social norm at that time so we really I can't say that I
Speaker 3:would We can't do anything put today's situation into a period sixty five years.
Speaker 2:Exactly exactly so I'd say we probably did the same thing we would do it all over again.
Speaker 3:And we were lucky we found the right person.
Speaker 4:To end the episode, can you thank each other for something?
Speaker 2:I thank you for being alive.
Speaker 3:And I thank you for
Speaker 2:being you being you. Thank you.
Speaker 4:Cute. So happy to watch you two together and do this little Valentine's Day episode. We will be posting plenty of Grandma and Poppy. So remember to follow along and follow Excuse My Grandma on social media, and we'll see you soon.