Jack and Florence Friedman

October 24th, 1953

Today, Jack and Florence Friedman would have been married 71 years. After 36 years of marriage, though, they split up — for about a year and a half — but then reunited. Year later I asked my father, an accountant, how long they had been married.

“Gross or net?” he asked.

I put that story in my act. When my mother heard me do it on stage one night, she told me, “Ba, don’t kid yourself, they were all gross.”

That made it in the act, too.