By Jimmy Magahern
Staying popular with the public is one thing. How do some of the Valley’s most likable personalities remain lovable at home?
Playing Mr. Wonderful for one day every February is something most married men manage to do. Given the excuse of Valentine’s Day to focus 24 hours of their attention on their spouses, average men som---ehow muster the energy and creativity to direct airplanes to sky-write love poems, persuade strolling violinists to serenade their sweethearts and boost chocolate sales to record highs.
The trick, of course, is in managing to keep up the Mr. Wonderful act for the other 364 days of the year. For most men, Valentine’s Day can be an exhausting command performance, one requiring total emersion in an against-type romantic role, the writing and memorization of several key lines, and often, when things go right, a costume change or two. How can anyone continue to play such a charming character day in and day out?
To find out, we asked a trio of prominent Valley personalities who know a thing or two about playing charming — and who also appear to walk the talk at home, managing to sustain both a perennially popular public persona and a rock-solid personal relationship.
Is there a connection between playing a likable personality in public and playing a lovable spouse at home? Are there tips we can learn from these “always on” performers to keep our own approval ratings high in the romance department?
Most insist playing the McDreamy role is not an act at all, when you’re with the right mate.
“If you’re really in love with the person, it’s really not hard,” says Alice Cooper, one of the most theatrical men in rock, who’s been married to the same woman since 1975. “But you can’t treat her like she’s just part of your daily life. You’ve got to treat her like you’re still dating her. I’ve always said that men are microwaves and women are pressure cookers. I think men forget what romance is.”
Alice and Sheryl Cooper
Perhaps it helps that he’s spent the better part of the last four decades in makeup and costumes, performing under a traditionally girl’s name. But veteran shock-rocker Alice Cooper says one of the secrets to the success of his 35-year marriage to former ballerina Sheryl Goddard is that he can literally lay out her clothes for the day.
“Sheryl says, ‘The strangest thing about my husband is that he can pack for me for a month-long trip. And it would be exactly right!’” says Cooper, with a laugh. “I mean, I could tell you what size she is. I could tell you what color she wears, and what size her shoes are. I could tell you what she would buy and what she wouldn’t buy, because when I go out with her shopping, I watch what she gets. So I know exactly what she likes.”
Sounds like a lot of time standing idly around The Dress Barn for a rock legend who continues to record and tour, hosts a syndicated radio show and runs a restaurant, Alice Cooper’s Town, in downtown Phoenix — not to mention golf, Cooper’s consuming interest since the Cortez High grad permanently relocated to Phoenix in 1983. Can Cooper really remain that attentive to his wife’s clothes shopping while everyone from concert bookers in Britain to caterers for Barrett-Jackson’s car auction are ringing his cell phone?
“It sounds like a lot of work, but it’s really just opening your eyes,” he says. “If she’s the object of your affection, you should know everything about her.”
Ironically, Sheryl Goddard knew little about Alice Cooper when she auditioned with close to 2,000 other girls to become one of the dancers on his 1975 Welcome To My Nightmare tour.
“I wasn’t really looking to get married at all,” Cooper recalls. “I mean, I was in the No. 1 band in the world right then. Two No. 1 albums in a row. We were just flying, you know? And all of a sudden, here comes this skinny little ballet dancer that’s not rock ’n roll at all — and I just fall head over heels for her.”
At first, Cooper was attracted to Goddard’s legs — not that he had much choice. “Here she was, this classically trained dancer, and she ended up performing in about 20 different costumes where all you ever saw were her legs,” he says. “She played this giant dancing tooth, with just legs coming out in high heels that I would chase around the stage — very vaudevillian, you know. So finally one day, we’re sitting on an airplane, and I look over and she’s wearing shorts. I looked at her legs and I went, ‘You’re the tooth!’ And she goes, ‘Yeah. I also have a top and a head and a face and everything.’”
That smart-alecky attitude meshed with Cooper’s famous wit, and, save for a brief period when the two nearly split over the rocker’s now long-licked alcoholism, they’ve been inseparable ever since. The couple now has three children, ages 17 to 29.
Not that the shock-rocker and the ballerina have ever completely agreed on certain key things, like what they consider entertainment. “Whereas I’ll take her to a hockey game and take her to go see Jason vs. Freddy and all these ridiculously bad horror movies, she’ll say, ‘I want to go see the ballet.’ And I don’t fight that at all.”
Healthy compromise, after all, is the name of the game. “It’s sort of like, you have to find that middle ground,” Cooper says. “When I realized that she really loved ballet but would sit down and watch Monster vs. Godzilla for two or three hours, I said, ‘I think I found the right girl!’”
Bill and Liz Andres
For 17 years, Bill Andres provided a familiar, friendly voice on a series of Phoenix radio stations including KDKB, KOY, KOOL and KSLX, often sharing morning drive duties with a variety of personalities.
But at home, Andres trades quips with his wife of 28 years, a partner he describes as his toughest audience.
“We don’t see eye-to-eye on everything,” admits Andres. “For instance, she actually thinks some of my jokes aren’t funny, while I find everything I say universally hysterical. But we agree that the key to a happy marriage is always trying to put the needs and desires of your spouse ahead of your own.”
The story of how they met should give hope to every woman who’s ever been set up on a date by her well-meaning gal pals.
“We met on a blind date in February 1979,” Andres says. “About a year earlier, I was in the Florida Keys and had met some girls from Virginia, with whom I corresponded. When they heard I was moving from Michigan to Phoenix, they said, ‘Look up our friend Liz Nelson.’”
Andres moved to the Valley to co-host the morning shift at KDKB with John Giese, a stint that had him going to bed at 8 every weeknight to rise at 4:15 a.m. “I had zero nightlife,” he says. Nevertheless, after about three months in town, he dug out Nelson’s number to invite her to an ASU basketball game.
“I fell in love that night,” Andres professes. “And I think Liz did, too — though I must say she had far better prospects!”
Today, Bill and Liz run a public-relations business together, Andres Associates, out of their home in northeast Phoenix, and are dwarfed by their strapping sons, Eric and Will. “Yes, they are big guys,” Bill laughs, looking at a recent family photo where dad appears Mini-Me-sized beside the Andres giants.
As for their secret to staying together? “Of course it takes love,” Andres says. “But it also takes work, commitment, common interests, similar tolerance levels and similar views of money, faith, friendship, children and politics.”
Even if his wife doesn’t always laugh at his jokes.
“We’re going on 28 years of marriage, so we’re off to a pretty good start!”
Bertrand and Shellie Berry
Five days after the Arizona Cardinals’ heartbreaking loss in this year’s divisional playoffs to the New Orleans Saints, defensive end Bertrand Berry announced his retirement after 12 years in the NFL. “It’s time,” the 34-year-old Berry told reporters at Majerle’s sports bar in Chandler, adding that he’d been playing football since the age of nine. “I’ve given a lot of my life to the game, I have played the game at a high level, and I have tried to represent myself the best I could. I think I have played the game the right way. I think I have respected the game, and I think I left the game a little better than when I came in.”
Indeed, “B-Train,” as the fan favorite has become known, is widely regarded as one of the players who helped power the Cardinals’ resurgence after joining the team in 2004. In 2007 he received the prestigious Ed Block Courage Award, an honor given to NFL players who demonstrate the highest levels of “courage, dedication and inspiration” to their fellow teammates. A genuine good guy, Berry also gives tirelessly to charities through his own Bertrand Berry Foundation, hosting annual holiday shopping sprees for disadvantaged kids and raising money for organizations like Childhelp USA, Big Brothers and Big Sisters of Arizona and the Leukemia and Lymphoma Society.
Nowhere are the big guy’s best qualities on greater display, however, than in his marriage to wife Shellie, which this month celebrates its 11th wedding anniversary. Friends since the sixth grade, the humble, Texas-born Berry first became aware of Shellie Prentiss when the then 12-year-old classmate had to be hospitalized with acute myeloid leukemia, a rare cancer of the blood cells. Shellie survived the cancer, and the two began dating during their high-school years, eventually reconnecting after college and finally marrying in 1999.
Today, the Gilbert couple runs the Bertrand Berry Foundation together, and Shellie is also founder of Recess! Kids Club, an affordable drop-in daycare center in Gilbert where the Berry’s own three kids, ages 4 to 9, can often be found playing in the center’s imaginative mini-town, complete with pretend grocery store, costume shop and auto garage. If Berry misses the football field, there’s even a mini indoor replica of one at his wife’s club.
“The key to (relationship) longevity is communication,” Berry says, pausing to talk privately about his relationship on the very same day he publicly announces his retirement from the NFL. “The key ingredients to a successful marriage include unwavering commitment, consistent communication, compromise and trustworthiness.”
Clearly, marriage is one commitment Berry has no plans to walk away from.
“You need to trust each other, expect the unexpected, and balance peace and problems,” he says. “And personally give a 100 percent commitment and effort 100 percent of the time.”
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