By Cokie & Steve Roberts
An exclusive excerpt from a heartwarming new book on their 33 years together.

Contributing Editors Cokie and Steve Roberts have reported for USA WEEKEND magazine on topics as diverse as hidden hunger in America and Secretary of State Madeleine Albright. But in March 1997, they took a personal turn by writing movingly about their interfaith marriage -- she's Catholic, he's Jewish -- in an open letter to their grown children, Lee and Becca. Readers reacted to the Robertses' message of cooperation with admiring letters and phone calls, inspiring the couple to write their new book on marriage, From This Day Forward.

In this excerpt, told in their trademark back-and-forth style, the Robertses reflect on both their 33-year union and the young marriages of their children. "Their primary responsibility was now to someone else, not us," they write. "When Becca or Lee arrived safely somewhere, they called their spouses, not their parents. That's what life is about: letting go. Our travels as a couple still have a long way to go, and now our children have started on their own journeys."

Cokie: At this stage of life, with the children grown and gone, think how sad it would be not to have each other. We're still able to look at each other in the morning and say, "Gee, I'm glad you're here."

Steve: Or at least most mornings! Let's not get too sappy here.

Cokie: Fair enough. Most mornings. I think the word is "devotion." There's a special level of affection that is based on longevity, on knowing each other well over a period of time and going through many things together, happy and sad.

Steve: I think of the day my dad died. Cokie was supporting my mother as we walked down the corridor in the hospital to see my father for the last time. Those moments are as meaningful as walking a daughter down the aisle to be married. There is a great joy in familiarity, and the most obvious sign of that is the way we finish each other's sentences.

Cokie: Or don't even have to begin them. The kids think we're quite loony.

Steve: We've learned we're not going to change each other. For all the ways we've adapted and the quirks we've accepted, we remain different people with different backgrounds. For instance, I will never share Cokie's experience as a woman or her education as a Catholic, and occasionally we've disagreed so strongly on an issue that we've split our newspaper column in half, with each of us writing a different opinion. But the differences show up in personal ways, too.

Cokie: I was raised in a situation where family and close friends stayed with us for weeks, even months, at a time. I would move into my sister's room with her, and the guests would take my room. It never occurred to me that I wouldn't inconvenience myself for other people. My Aunt Tootsie, who had seven children and not much money, had a saying that summed up the family attitude: "If there's room in the heart, there's room in the home." That was very different from the way Steven was raised. I don't think you ever had people spend the night, right?

Steve: That was partly because we lived in cramped conditions. By the time my sister was born, almost every room in our house became a bedroom. But basically, I agree with you. We grew up with a very different sense of privacy, and it's taken more than a little adjusting on both sides. I had to learn to be more flexible, and Cokie had to learn to be more protective.

Cokie: But it's still the greatest source of tension in our marriage. There are times I feel Steven is being selfish, when he doesn't want to put himself out. Other times, he is absolutely right; if we operated the way I instinctively operate, we would never have a minute to ourselves. We'd be overtaken by other people's demands.

Steve: At times she allows our lives to be dictated too much by other people. She can push herself to exhaustion with the demands of work and entertaining and caretaking. I love having our home be the center of family events. But Cokie has finally learned our house can't always be the center. Other people in the family and other friends want the chance to be the host, and not always come to us.

Cokie: That's true.

Steve: Sometimes there aren't enough holidays to go around. Our niece, Elizabeth, who's very special to us, is married to a Danish man, and in Danish culture, Christmas Eve is a special time. So they've made a big point in the last few years of making it their holiday. It's a good example of the next generation saying, "We don't always want to be the kids. We want to be the grown-ups." And it's important to give them that chance.

I've discovered that with my journalism students as well. I have a deal with them: When they're undergraduates and don't have any money, I always pay when we go out to some campus joint. Once they graduate and have jobs and want to take me out to lunch, I will happily accept.

Cokie: It's a passage. And it's nice for kids to have adult friends who are not their parents. To have someone who is interested in you and cares about you but does not have the emotional baggage of a parent-child relationship. But it's good the other way around, too -- for us to have young friends who are not our children.

Steve: Another thing I've learned from Cokie is the spirit of charity. Growing up in a more private setting meant we were more inward-looking as a family. My parents were public-spirited, and my father was very involved in local politics and civic organizations and gave money to causes he cared about. But for Cokie, charity is a part of her everyday life. She practically has a florist on retainer, and she visits so many hospital rooms she could probably qualify for degrees in several medical specialities. Or at least she thinks she could.

Cokie: Steven, who's a naturally generous and gregarious person, likes to schedule his time. But sometimes things happen that demand attention, regardless of the schedule. It's not what you planned that day -- too bad. Steve: On a recent Sunday, our newest great-nephew was born. At about 8 or 9 o'clock, we'd just finished dinner, and Cokie announced, "Come on. Let's go to the hospital. We have to meet William." So we did. Cokie: It's easy to convince Steven to throw plans to the winds when our own kids are involved. We miss them so much that we'll take any opportunity to see them. But we've had to adjust to the fact that they have other families who want to see them.

Steve: Like every couple, when we got married, we had to work out a holiday schedule. Cokie felt strongly about celebrating the religious holidays with her family, so the Robertses got Thanksgiving. We made it into an annual reunion and tried to spend several days together. After our daughter, Becca, got married, she decided to spend Thanksgiving with her husband Dan's family, and the first year was tough for us. In fact, I wrote a column about it, "The Empty Chair at the Table." It was a sign that they now had obligations to other families. They didn't belong only with us anymore.

Cokie: Distance also creates problems. When our son, Lee, and his wife, Liza, moved to London and couldn't get home for Christmas, they spent it in Rome with my mother [Lindy Boggs, U.S. ambassador to the Vatican]. For the millennium, we had this extended family in Rome together. What could be better?

Steve: The year after Lee got married, I opened a Christmas card from his in-laws, and there was a picture of their whole family -- including Lee! It was a shock to see my son peering out from another family's Christmas card!

Some years ago, the priest at our nephew Paul's wedding described marriage as "an unlimited commitment to an unknowable partner," and that's true. Marriage is an act of faith, as well as hope. Not every marriage endures, and not every marriage should -- we know that. But marriage will never work without that "unlimited commitment" to the future.

Cokie: When we go to weddings, we find ourselves becoming sentimental and teary. I've noticed that's true of other long-married couples, who nod through the ceremony, squeezing each other's hands as the bride and groom pledge "to have and to hold, from this day forward." Those newlyweds can't possibly know what that promise will mean. We didn't, either, when we said those words that beautiful September night when we were so young. We've been incredibly blessed.

So far, we've lived for better, not worse; richer, not poorer; and in health, not sickness. Still, after 33 years, we can't anticipate what will happen from this day forward. But we're eager to find out.

PHOTO CREDIT: Max Hirshfeld for USA WEEKEND

Steve Roberts is a political analyst for CNN and ABC Radio and teaches at George Washington University. Cokie Roberts is co-anchor of ABC's This Week and author of the best seller We Are Our Mothers' Daughters. Together they write a syndicated newspaper column.

Excerpted from the book From This Day Forward, by Cokie and Steven V. Roberts. Copyright © 2000 by Cokie and Steven V. Roberts. Reprinted by permission of William Morrow & Co. Inc.