HOMESecond Time is the Charm in Las Vegas Weddings
Couples who marry each other again after divorcing have had the chance to mature and forget the small stuff that bothered them the first time.
Barbara and Don Baker were married in the '70s. They divorced and remained friends for 25 years until they remarried in Las Vegas.
Bill and Sally Craig are about as opposite as they come.
Bill, 61, admits it: He's tight with money.
"It's made to spend!" his wife, 53, exclaims in mock exasperation.
Despite that, the couple are crazy happy, in soul mate bliss. She reads his mind at the ice-cream parlor, he finishes her sentences. A breast cancer survivor who can't yet return to work, Sally packs his lunch and dinner because he works three jobs to help pay her medical bills.
The Craigs belong together, a realization that was 25 years, two weddings and one divorce in the making.
"Being apart got us to appreciate each other more," she says.
They are among an estimated 6 percent of American couples who marry, divorce, then remarry each other, according to a study by Nancy Kalish, a psychology professor at California State University in Sacramento. Kalish's research on 1,001 reunited couples from 1993 to 1996 was published in her book "Lost & Found Lovers: Facts and Fantasies of Rekindled Romances" (William Morrow, $21.95).
Many were married just out of high school, shouldering emotional, financial and educational burdens of being young. They had children, bought houses and paid bills, but grew apart and couldn't, or wouldn't, make it work.
After divorcing, some remained friends while others were mostly estranged until reunited by the wedding of a child or death of a parent.
Second Time is the Charm in Las Vegas Weddings!