Power Couple Splits

HARRISBURG - The Rendells are splitting up.

Just shy of three weeks after leaving office, former Gov. Ed Rendell and his wife, federal Judge Marjorie O. Rendell, announced they are separating after 40 years of marriage.

In a brief e-mail sent to friends Monday, the Rendells said they have decided to "embark upon this next phase of our lives by living separately."

The longtime Philadelphia power couple said that the split was amicable and that they would remain friends and active in the community "sometimes together, sometimes separately." The couple asked that friends respect their privacy and their decision and "wish us well."

No mention was made of divorce.

Kaylan Dorsch, a spokeswoman for Ed Rendell, said he would have no further comment.

"Although Ed and Midge Rendell are obviously a public couple, this decision is a personal one and a private one," said David L. Cohen, the former governor's longtime close friend and confidant. "What is in that e-mail is the beginning, middle, and end of what they want to say."

Kevin Feeley, a spokesman for the couple, said he did not know who would remain in the couple's East Falls house.

There was no immediate word of what might have triggered the couple's breakup. Ed Rendell has never denied his flirtatious nature. Last year, in an interview with The Inquirer, he said there was no truth to rumors that he and his wife were ending their relationship, which began in 1968 as college sweethearts.

"We are not separating," he said on June 8. "We've been together 42 years and we are doing fine. And all this stuff is a bunch of hooey."

In that interview, he said he believed the separation talk was sparked by a news photograph - taken on primary day last spring at the Famous 4th Street Delicatessen - that showed him seated at a table with Kirstin Snow, who at the time headed Commonwealth Media Services, a state office that provides audio and video support to the governor's office and other departments.

Rumors swirled in Harrisburg about Rendell and Snow, who has a doctorate in business administration. They were spotted at restaurants, and she traveled with him to some public events he was attending as governor. He turned up at her son's baseball game, raising many an eyebrow.

Both said there was no romantic link in a story in Philadelphia Magazine in July.

In the June interview with The Inquirer, Rendell called Snow a "terrific friend," but only a friend. "Do I like her a lot? Sure," he said. "But there is nothing romantic."

He said his only friends were people he worked with. "Nobody calls me Ed anymore," he lamented.

He said it had been "tough on Midge to read about this stuff." He also said it had been tough on Snow. "She's worried about her 6-year-old boy."

Snow could not be reached for comment Monday. In the June interview, she, too, was adamant. "If I were a man, and not 6 feet tall and blond, would this even be an issue?" asked Snow, who was Miss Pennsylvania in 1994.

Snow said she and Rendell became friends because he often went to her agency's studio for his television and other media appearances.

She said that he was helpful and empathetic when she was going through a difficult divorce in 2008, and that he became close to her son because she would frequently have to bring him in the office when she was working late.

Snow now works for the political action committee that oversees Rendell's campaign money from when he was governor. She does administrative work for the PAC.

Buzz Bissinger, an author and former Inquirer reporter who has known Rendell for years, said that although the Rendells waited to make their split official until after he had left office, "the marriage went south and it didn't happen overnight."

Yet he said he believes the two are sincere in saying they will remain friends.

"Whoever Ed is with, no one will know him like Midge Rendell knows him," said Bissinger, who authored A Prayer for the City, a chronicle of Rendell's tumultuous first term as Philadelphia's mayor. "She's been through everything with him. No one is going to match that in either of their lives. They have that kind of history together."

Ed Rendell, 67, stepped down from what he said was his final elected post Jan. 18 after two terms as governor.

Marjorie Rendell, 64, is a judge on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Third Circuit. The couple, who married in 1971, have a son, Jesse, a lawyer in Philadelphia. The two met at a party in 1968 when she was a junior at the University of Pennsylvania and he was a third-year student at Villanova Law School.

She had come to the party with one of Rendell's friends, so the next day the future mayor and governor called his friend to seek permission to ask her out.

The e-mail that went out to friends Monday asked them to respect the Rendells' privacy.

And in a postscript, it read: "Please do not hesitate to include both of us in social occasions as we will not find it awkward or uncomfortable."

Complete coverage - and a look back at the Rendells over the years - at www.philly.com

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