'Office spouses' almost like real
By Dana Knight
Indianapolis Star
Gene Huddleson took Anne Steinberg for better or worse.
For raises or demotions. In sick days and in healthcare costs. And forsaking all others, promised to be faithful only to Anne as long as they both shall work at Detail + Design.
These two are serious "office spouses."
You know that guy and girl who work so closely together that they might as well be married?
We're not talking sexual affairs, but about workplace relationships in which people like Huddleson and Steinberg have an electric relationship. Feed off of each other. And of course, as in any real marriage, spend time bickering.
"She'll do the accounting, and she'll scold me when I haven't written a date on something, or there's a receipt with the wrong amount," says Huddleson, 44, who partners with Steinberg to run their full-service event company in Indianapolis.
These relationships epitomize a true gray area in office dynamics, says Kevin Salwen, co-creator of Worthwhile, a workplace magazine that delved into the issue of office spouses in its May issue. "It's not a black-white kind of thing," he says.
The deepest spousal office relationships happen most often in workplaces with travel and intense deadlines.
"This time together creates these kinds of bonds that are intensely personal and can be electrically charged," Salwen says. As long as sex stays out of it, it can be beneficial to a company to have that type of teamwork going on, he says.
But these pseudo-marriages can have a downside — the real one at home.
"Sometimes that connection at the office is so deep, you get home and there's nothing left. Your personal connection has been fulfilled at work," Salwen says. "These can, frankly, be the most exciting relationships you have going on in your life."
Martha Weaver and Ray Cortopassi are in the middle of an ironic workplace union. Weaver and her actual husband expect their first child June 24. Cortopassi and his real-life wife expect their fourth child, a boy, within days of Weaver.
"We do act like an old married couple," says Weaver, 36, who anchors the evening and nightly news with Cortopassi on Indianapolis' WRTV.
"We really have no choice," says Cortopassi, 38. "I see Martha pretty much more than I see my own wife and kids."
Their desks are next to each other in the newsroom, and they sit shoulder to shoulder on live television every night for two hours.
Weaver knows Cortopassi's innermost dreams. "If he could be a drummer in a band, I think his dreams would come true," she says.
As for Weaver, Cortopassi says, "Her passion is golf, and to say she's an animal lover would be an understatement. She loves dogs, specifically golden retrievers. She drives really fast."
"So do you," Weaver snaps back.
"I do not," says Cortopassi.
Ray, Martha, don't you mean "I do"?
