N.Y. Times wedding announcement raises scandalized eyebrows

The New York Times wedding announcement section is traditionally the serene province of people with pedigree. Tucked away inside the paper's Sunday Style section, it's typically a place where the spawn of diplomats and Wall Street titans share cutesy tales of how Cupid's arrow brought them together, while making sure to drop in a casual mention of the elite schools attended by the couple. This, of course, has long made the section ripe for ridicule -- Gawker has long devoted a weekly feature to mocking the more ridiculous submissions to "Vows."

It stands to reason, then, that Times wedding announcements -- which section editors carefully vet from scores of couples petitioning for the cachet that comes with a Times writeup -- rarely draw attention to scandal or domestic dysfunction. But Sunday's unvarnished story of how Carol Anne Riddell and John Partilla came to become man and wife was very much an exception.

Riddell, an anchor with WNBC television in New York, and Partilla, president of media sales at Time Warner, met when they were both married to other people. The two couples became friends, often socializing together -- but at some point along the way Riddell and Partilla secretly fell in love with each other, which complicated matters slightly, of course.

"Carol Anne Riddell and John Partilla met in 2006 in a pre-kindergarten classroom. They both had children attending the same Upper West Side school. They also both had spouses," the Times' Devan Sipher explains. "The connection was immediate, but platonic. In fact, as they became friends so did their spouses. There were dinners, Christmas parties and even family vacations together."

Here's how Sipher explains what happened next:

"In May 2008, Mr. Partilla invited her for a drink at O'Connell's, a neighborhood bar. She said she knew something was up, because they had never met on their own before.

"'I've fallen in love with you,' he recalled saying to her. She jumped up, knocking a glass of beer into his lap, and rushed out of the bar. Five minutes later, he said, she returned and told him, 'I feel exactly the same way.' Then she left again."

In a rather straightforward and unapologetic manner, Partilla and Riddell explain that they agreed to handle "a terrible thing" as "honorably" as they could by immediately separating from their spouses rather than engaging in a secret affair. "I wanted to get up in the morning and read the paper with him," Riddell explained.

Now they're catching heat over the announcement. The Village Voice's Joe Coscarelli -- whose item on the announcement was headlined, "New York Times Wedding Couple Flaunts Leaving Their Spouses, Screwing Up Their Kids" -- wondered, "Why would you sign up for this? Why would you apply to air your family business? WHY ARE YOU SO DAMN PROUD OF YOURSELVES?"

Mediaite's Nisha Chittal, too, wondered why the couple would choose to air their dirty laundry in the age of the Internet, where unflattering stories are but a search engine away from all of us: "One has to pity their five children, who will some day be able to read about all of this online."

Gawker's Adrian Chen rounded up a few Twitter reactions to the "homewrecking couple's" romantic tale. Radio host John Moe tweeted that it was "easily the saddest story in the New York Times today."

The Times itself is also catching some heat from its readers. A spirited debate broke out in the comment thread of the announcement, with one reader asking, "Why does the Times glorify home-wrecking? Is it a sign of our times that personal responsibility to one's spouse and children takes a back seat to selfish, self-centered love."

Most of the Times readers on the comment thread -- which is now closed -- blasted the couple and the paper. But at least one of them was sympathetic: "The world is not perfect and life is far from perfect. Love happens at inconvenient times. I commend this couple for handling this situation with honesty and openness. I wish them a long and happy marriage."

UPDATE: The couple and the Times elaborated on their motivations today with Forbes' Jeff Bercovici.

(Screenshot of article from NYTimes.com)