When Kate walked into a New York bar in October 2008, she wasn’t in the mood for a night out. “I’d left my husband two weeks before and was feeling very low,” she says. “I had a sprained ankle and was on crutches, but a friend of mine was in town and wanted me to meet her partner. I went to be supportive.” It turns out it wasn’t the only meeting her friend had in mind. “She told me I was about to meet a beautiful man and that I should give him a chance, despite his age.”
She was introduced to Brendan and sparks flew immediately. “I had no idea there was a 20-year age difference when we started talking,” he says. “But I’d dated older women before, so it wasn’t something I would have noticed.” Overwhelmed by the chemistry between them, Kate took a step back. “I wasn’t ready to start anything new and he was so much younger than me.”
Brendan watched her hobble away. “Our mutual friend said I should chase her and I joked that it wouldn’t be hard to catch her.”
For the next few months, they continued with their lives. Kate was based in Brooklyn and working as a writer of literary fiction, while Brendan spent the winter alone in a farmhouse in New Hampshire, writing poetry and planning his next career steps. When he returned a few months later, he asked Kate for dinner. “Our friend had told me that she’d talked about me lots,” he says.
“That’s totally true,” Kate laughs. “But I still didn’t feel ready. I pretended to be under the weather.” Luckily, he didn’t give up; the pair met up on his next visit to New York, in March 2009. However, Kate still wasn’t prepared to take him seriously, due to the age gap. “I was wary of words like ‘cougar’ being thrown around if we dated. I thought it would just be a one-night stand, so I picked out a sexy outfit.” But over dinner they discovered how much they had in common. “We come from similar families and we were read the same books when we were little. We both sang medieval renaissance choral music, of all things,” says Kate. There was no awkwardness at all during the “amazing and unexpected” evening.
“It was like discovering someone you’d always known,” says Brendan. “We talked about poetry, music and the time just disappeared.” The pair became a couple that night and have been inseparable since.
For the first few years of their relationship, they travelled extensively, spending time in New York and New Hampshire. “We also went to Europe and New Zealand for writers’ residencies,” says Kate. “We would set up our desks together and write next to each other.” In 2011, they bought a home in Portland, Maine. “We put all our money into the house after that,” says Brendan. The couple married in September 2016, after Kate’s divorce came through. “It took a long time,” she says. “We joke that we met two weeks after I split with my ex and married two weeks after the papers were signed.”
Kate loves her husband’s intelligence and sense of humour. “Even when I think he’s dead wrong, he turns out to be right,” she says. “I love everything about him. It doesn’t hurt that he’s so handsome, too.” Brendan says they are able to be themselves around each other. “When you fall in love, it’s like being on drugs for a few years. The drugs wore off and I found myself even more in love.” With a wife who is so “brilliant and inspiring”, he has never worried about the age gap. “I knew I didn’t want children,” he says. “I wanted a marriage where we could focus entirely on our relationship.”
The couple split their time between Maine and Los Angeles, where Brendan works as a screenwriter. They live with their two rescue dogs.
Before they met, Kate had “always” been lonely, she says. “When we found each other, I think we were both a little lost. But he’s my soulmate and I have never been lonely again since the night we got together.”
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