from: 40-74 magazine
from: 40-74 magazine
July 2008
It’s shortly after 9 in the morning, which means Robin Quivers’ internal clock is probably striking around noon.
There have been two unchanging constants in Quivers’ life since kicking side with Howard Stern some 27 years ago. One is arising at an ungodly morning hour for the purpose of helping millions of fans overcome the drudgery of a morning commute.
The other is this ubiquitous and infectious laugh, which would probably be listed as Clue No. 2 if Quivers was a Password category. What you hear on the radio is what you get off of it. And it seems more a matter of her being incredibly happy rather than being easily entertained.
Gazing out from the deck of her $3 million retreat on Long Beach Island on this windy Friday morning, the contentment is justified. Behind her is 3,400 square feet of perfect New Jersey Shore sanctuary, which she indulges in on weekends all year-round. Before her is a property line that stretches across 135 feet of open-bay lagoon.
“Those people there are like on another island,” says Quivers, pointing to a distant home across the waterway. “Over here, there’s an older couple who have been here for years and years, and they’re wonderful. But I can tell you, nobody comes down here all the time.”
These are indeed sunny days for Robin Quivers. Serving as co-host and “voice of reason” for one of the most influential radio shows in the history of the medium has afforded Quivers the spoils of this tucked-away beach haven. And she calls the show’s 2½ years on Sirius Satellite Radio “the most freeing experience” in its storied history.
Quivers, 55, is also flourishing on the personal side. Adopting a strict vegan diet, the golden-throated broadcaster has dropped nearly 70 pounds in the past year – and rarely goes an hour without getting a compliment for it.
She has lent her celebrity and time to raise money for Healing Bridges, an organization that provides for struggling nations in Africa. And she has a new steady – and younger – boyfriend in New Jersey comedian Jim Florentine.
Certainly, she’s on a clearer frequency after some years of static.
“What I find about her is she just seems a happier person these days,” tells Fred Norris, the Stern show’s sound effects maestro, writer and musician who has worked with Quivers since 1982. “And I, being a big fan of hers as a human being, am really thrilled for her.”
MAKING WAVES
Quivers’ course to the Howard Stern Show is well-documented, although no less unique in retrospect. She was a nurse in the United States Air Force and found that this would not be her life’s calling. So the Baltimore native opened up the Yellow Pages and found an ad for the Broadcasting Institute of Maryland. She attended the school and soon found herself reading consumer reports for a station in Charm City.
In 1981, she got a call from a program director at DC101 in Washington, D.C., who liked her voice and thought she would make a nice complement to this rogue radio madman who would change the face of radio and leave a distinguished scar on popular culture in America.
Stern did not respond to requests for comments for this story, but has in the past said the show would have never been the same without Quivers.
“I think people underestimate what Robin brings to the show,” Stern praises in “The History of Howard Stern” radio special, which aired on Sirius in December. “My father was always the biggest fan of Robin. Whenever he would hear tapes of me out of Washington, he would say, ‘Boy she’s really good; she’s really bright.’
“She fills in the information I don’t have. She has tremendous radio instincts. Vocally she has a beautiful voice, which is something not to be overlooked. It’s really key.”
But how in the world did Robin Quivers find Long Beach Island, especially when many of New York’s elite – including Stern – gravitate to the Hamptons for their summer getaways?
Quivers said she actually was a Hamptons visitor before Stern. But she didn't find it to be “the beach.”
“I found people were there for the scene and were doing things that I wouldn’t normally associate with going to the shore,” Quivers recalls. “In my mind, at the beach, you shouldn’t have to worry about making a reservation on a Wednesday for a weekend dinner or what parties are going on or what jewelry I have to pack for the weekend.
“One weekend I went to the Hamptons, I saw more white and gold than I’ve ever seen in my life. But when I’m at LBI, I’ll see someone dragging a wagon with some ratty towel in the back. And I think, ‘That’s what the shore is supposed to be.’ ”
After much prodding from her Jersey Shore friends, Quivers, who lives full time in New York, finally took their advice and started venturing south to see what all the fuss was about.
“I walked out on my friend’s deck, and I just couldn’t believe the feeling and the peacefulness,” she says. “I would say, ‘This is what I would travel 3,000 miles to get. Who knew it was right in my backyard?’ ”
Quivers took a slight detour to her home on Long Beach Island. She first purchased a house in Manahawkin in 2004, but found herself continually “crossing the causeway” for a truer coastal existence. So not much more than a year later, she headed due east on Route 72 and took up on New Jersey’s great barrier island.
“I would go just as soon as I could get there,” says Quivers, who now has Fridays off on Sirius. “I couldn’t believe how much fun I had there and how much I enjoyed entertaining there. It opened me up in terms of de-stressing and relaxing and just enjoying myself.”
Stern and the rest of the cast, incidentally, have been to Quivers’ quarters. They came away understanding why she would make the trek during so many weekends throughout the year.
“She threw just an amazing party,” recounts longtime “Stern Show” producer Gary Dell’Abate. “She’s got her own boats and then she rented a little speedboat. The kids had a great time. It was beautiful. And when I saw the house, I thought, ‘You know what? Good for her. I can just see her kicking back and hanging out and that’s what she likes. It’s well-earned.’ ”
Quivers, for all of her sociability, also enjoys her seclusion. And it’s one of the main reasons she’s not just a summertime Jersey gal.
“Oh, the winter, it’s mine,” she says. “It feels like I own the beach. It’s amazing. All the concerns of the world go away.”
A NEW PLATEAU
Of course, solitude comes a little easier for Quivers now if for the simple fact that there’s much less of her to see.
It was just over a year ago when Quivers decided to make a major lifestyle change – one that she promised to stick to after previous false starts. It wasn’t prompted by a coarse comment overheard on the unfiltered show that brought about the decision.
“It was my health,” she declares. “I was not the type of person who ate 50 Big Macs. I wasn’t having a great time being fat. I was eating what most people consider a relatively healthy diet and not doing well.
“As a result, I was living this horrible, sad, uncomfortable life. I didn’t like seeing people. It was awful.”
Quivers got started with The Martha’s Vineyard Diet Detox, which serves as a cleansing process through the consumption of specialized drinks that mix supplements, vegetable purees, herbal teas and distilled water. Not to mention the occasional coffee enema.
Once cleansed of her toxins, Quivers went completely vegan. She regularly “juices” for breakfast and might have another at lunch with a small salad. These organic juices, mixed with nutritional supplements, can contain beets, celery, carrots, cabbage, kale, romaine or apple juice.
Seen in her kitchen on the morning of our visit was a thick concoction we can best describe as “green.”
“This one tastes like grit,” she acknowledges. “There’s so much fiber in it.”
Dinners might include grilled vegetables, sometimes with a small amount of pasta or risotto (made with olive oil, instead of butter).
Quivers knows she has her skeptics, particularly on the show, where there are five hours a day to be skeptical. She had gone through rapid weight loss earlier in the decade, only to gain it back – which she attributes to a lack of long-term education behind previous diets.
Because she finds herself more energetic as a vegetarian, Quivers has no problem shaking off the abuse that might come from her dozy co-workers. It’s the criticism of her diet from some in the medical community, who find the approach too radical and the diet lacking protein and fiber, that she finds irritating.
“I’ve done something that has given me better health, that has addressed a bunch of issues for me and made me happier in my life,” she exclaims. “It seems if you’re not doing something with a doctor, they tend to attack it. I’m just doing what makes me feel good.”
STRONG SIGNAL
Quivers is mindful of the risks she takes speaking out on any subject. Any point made on the show could result in a background bed of the pretentious, self-empowering piano music Norris has hysterically supplied to Quivers’ commentaries for the past 14 years.
But Quivers’ candor is as much the byproduct of her own personal growth as her years with the brutally honest Stern. In her 1995 memoir, “Quivers: A Life,” she chronicled growing up in a modest, brick row home in Northwest Baltimore that hid a “dirty little secret.” Quivers’ late father was molesting her. Quivers said she required therapy to overcome years of depression.
The Stern spotlight has also resulted in off-air criticisms. As a black woman, Quivers has sometimes been questioned for laughing along with some of the Stern show’s edgier satire – and she doesn’t get much recognition when she does combat the radio host.
“There are always people out there trying to tell you how to react to something,” she says. “I don’t know what kind of freedom that is.”
Then there are fans of the show who give her a hard time for being too vocal during certain segments and co-workers who label her as narcissistic.
Incidentally, Florentine, the Old Bridge native who has been dating Quivers since September, says she is probably the least-affected woman he has ever courted.
“Robin is definitely the most low-maintenance woman I’ve ever dated,” says Florentine, 43, before a stand-up gig in Dallas. “She’s just really cool. She’s very, very smart, has a great sense of humor and is a lot of fun to be around.”
Fun has come in many forms for Quivers. She has taken on horseback riding, racecar driving and boating in recent years. Other times, Quivers seems content relaxing at home with her three cats – Brangelina, Jennifer Aniston and Kelly – if she’s not working out or sampling some of New York’s better restaurants.
But it’s at Sirius where she’s having the most fun, now that there are none of the Federal Communications Commission guidelines that hovered over the show in its latter years on terrestrial radio.
“We are all amazed at how much happier we are,” she says. “When we’re talking to each other on the air, I sort of picture it like a bar where your friends get together after a hard day’s work, and this is the stuff you do to entertain each other.”
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[January 7, 2001 - Editor note: I don't believe Robin lives in this apartment anymore. In the year 2000 she referenced her "house" on the show, leading me to believe she's sold this apartment.]
"I wanted a place that was completely the opposite of what I do all day. It had to be romantic, feminine...circumspect," says Robin Quivers with a laugh. Indeed, circumspection is hardly the strong suit of The Howard Stern Show, where five early mornings a week Quivers plays hip den mother to Stern and his raucous band of bad boys, a role she originated in 1981 when she and the disc jockey hooked up in Washington, D.C.
Since then Quivers has watched The Howard Stern Show spiral from radio to television (the E! Channel) to movies (Private Parts, with Quivers playing herself). This fall brought yet another new challenge when Howard, Robin and company debuted on CBS, going up against the venerable Saturday Night Live in a run for the weekend money.
With nary a dull moment Sternside, Quivers found herself, two years ago, looking for something even more exotic - "calm and tranquility," she says. "I wanted to come home to a place that was welcoming, warm and subdued, because, believe me, I get all the excitement I need at work."
Ironically, it was her boss who motivated his partner - the product of "a working-class Baltimore family with shag carpet and everything covered in plastic" - to finally homestead on her own. "Howard, who has a beautifull house on Long Island, always said, 'I work very hard, I make a good living, and I don't like to go anywhere. I want my home to be exactly what I want, with things designed specifically for me.' And I thought, Why can't I have that too?"
Now she does. Devotees of The Howard Stern Show, which is often criticized for its lack of taste, might well be surprised at the elegance of Quivers's duplex apartment on Manhattan's Upper East Side. "People walk in here all the time and say, 'I can't believe you live here.'" Perhaps their reaction stems from the eighteenth- and nineteenth-century antiques and art, the alabaster chandelier, the Aubusson rug, the cabinetry accented in gold leaf, the Baccarat lamps or Quivers's collection of elephants carved out of everything from Chinese jade to Waterford crystal.
The first floor comprises the combined living area and library (with the latter doubling as an office during the day), the dining area and the kitchen, while the second floor houses the romantic master suite. "I don't have a bedroom," Quivers points out, "I have a boudoir." Filling an entire wall is a French giltwood trumeau painted with cherubs. The lit a la polonaise, meanwhile, boasts a partial canopy draped with coquille lace and is strewn with antique pillows. "Every woman looks at the bed and says, 'This is incredible.' Every guy walks in and says, 'How many pillows are on that bed anyway?' My boyfriend said he'd make up the bed, but he doesn't know how."
If anything, Robin Quivers seems to be something of an independent romantic, her dueling predilections best best illustrated by the pillow sitting atop the boudoir's lavender-moire-velvet-covered chaise longue. "Behind every successful woman," it reads, "is herself."
Quivers has moved frequently over the years, never quite settling in. "I kept saying what single women always say - that I'd have a home when there was a reason, like a husband. And then one day I decided that I wasn't going to wait forever to make a home for myself. I don't stay in because I don't have a date; I didn't wait to see Paris until I had a man to travel with. Just because I haven't found my partner yet doesn't mean that I don't need a home."
So she began building one, along with interior designer Joy Mazur. "I said, 'This time I'm going to get a decorator and do it the way it should be done. I want to have my fantasy. I want to go wild.'"
Mazur was only too happy to aid and abet Quivers in her walk on the wild side. "I told Joy I liked over-stuffed sofas, silks and brocades, warm, earthy tones and pieces with a lot of different shapes. There's enough 'square' in the world. I wanted the rooms to have more of a flow."
Beyond that, she wasn't sure. "Did I think I had good taste? Not really. I knew what I liked when I saw it, I just couldn't do it myself. Thanks to Joy, I got a real education." On their shopping expeditions Quivers found herself drawn to "eighteenth- and nineteenth-century antiques and art, anything hand-painted and French, and wood combinations with inlay - wood with marble, tiles, stone." Because of the radio personality's grueling work schedule, Mazur was left to do most of the legwork. "There were moving trucks in front of the building all the time, with furniture going in and out for my approval," she remembers. "One thing I love about my house is that I selected every single item myself.
"I thought clothes shopping was fun, but furniture shopping is big-time fun." She points to a meridienne covered in pale green silk and nestled under a window. "A lot of pieces had to be restored, like this one. It had an old finish, no fabric, was tattered and torn, and a cushion was missing. It was a mess. Joy brought a picture and said, 'Before you look at this, let me explain what it is. This is a real find, a museum piece; it can be wonderful if we restore it.'"
Quivers and Mazur worked on the apartment for an entire year. "I stayed away as much as I could, because when you have as much exposure as I do, you can't walk into a house full of strangers all the time. I felt like I was living in my car. I'd go to work at five every morning, ride my horses in the afternoon [she boards two in Westchester County], come home, grab clothes and head for the gym."
Eventually, at Thanksgiving, it all came together - just as Mazur had promised. "Here I was, two days before the holiday, expecting guests, and living in an empty apartment with plastic hanging from the ceiling. I said, 'Joy, I can't live this way anymore.' Mazur assured her she didn't have to, making Quivers promise not to return home before five on Thanksgiving eve. She followed orders, but even at the designated hour, "they wouldn't let me in," she recounts. "Guys were still finishing window treatments, touching up paint, laying carpets, and everyone wanted to see my face when I walked in."
Finally, they did. Entering her front door, Quivers was "overwhelmed," she recalls. "It looked like it does now, but without accessories. It was lovelier than I could ever have imagined. I told Howard the next day, 'I live in a museum.'"
Getting one's fantasy, however, can sometimes take a little getting used to. "At first it was intimidating. When you haven't lived with real quality before, it's like putting on a ball gown - it feels different; you walk differently. I thought, 'Maybe I won't be able to live with the kind of stuff you can't touch.' Then I started using it and was amazed at how usable it was."
Quivers's recent obsession with domesticity hardly went unnoticed among her friends, several of whom asked if decorating an apartment might be her "reconciliation to singlehood." "I said, 'Absolutely not. This is me saying I want to build a nest where I can relax and entertain people, that I'm ready for a significant relationship.'" And once she had build it, you might say, he came. Quivers is now seriously involved with "a man in law enforcement." And what does he think of her ultrafeminine abode? "He's a lounger kind of guy," she remarks. "He just rolls his eyes and says, 'Women. There isn't a comfortable place to sit in this apartment.'
"I used to vacation like this," she says. "I discovered my taste through traveling. I'd save up and stay at these incredible hotels - The Dorchester in London, the Bel Age in Los Angeles - just to have beautiful stuff around me." Quivers pauses, glancing at one of the first pieces of art she ever bought; a graceful male nude by sculptor Richard MacDonald. "Recently I was on vacation in Carmel and stayed in this gorgeous, rustic inn complete with incredible ocean views. And it was nice. But when I got back and walked into my own house, I said to myself, 'This is the most beautiful spot on earth to me.'"
The photo captions are the captions from the magazine's pictures.
My first reaction to these pictures was "WOW!!" What's yours?
Updated: June 24, 2008
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