There were always questions about Muriel Pfeil’s marriage to Neil Mackay. The age difference, for one. She was 33 when they married; he was 45. A twelve-year gap. Let's put that in other terms. He participated in World War II while she watched it from grade school. Now, that's not an impossible difference. Her own parents were separated by thirteen years. So yeah, she had an example. But often – perhaps too often – what we run into is an older, successful man wants nothing more than a trophy wife. Someone who makes him look good. And as far as I can tell, there was nothing about Muriel Pfeil that wanted to be a trophy wife.
In fact, my most profound sense is that she wanted a marriage of equals. That's what she experienced in her own life, between her parents. Love and respect. Her mother a school teacher who became a school principal. Her father a man who worked his way up from hard-working immigrant to prominent citizen, member of the city council, owner of land and apartments and a downtown department store.
So Muriel had, I don't know if I want to say expectations, but she had lofty examples of the kind of man she wanted to be with, her father being one of them.
But maybe there was something else? Opposites attract… Or maybe the hard charger mentality that they shared? And then there was the “wouldn't we be the power couple of all power couples” angle. Because remember, in those days Anchorage was not much more than an overgrown small town. Still is, to some degree. And with that all the attendant social stratification and elites and hoity-toity gossip brigades.
So, in that context, let's not put the age difference too high in the equation.
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