Courtesy Dr. S Robert Levine
NEED TO KNOW
Dr. S Robert Levine and Mary Tyler Moore were married in November 1983
The two enjoyed over 30 years together before the actress died in 2017
Levine tells PEOPLE about his memories from their wedding day and how it drives his continued work honoring Moore's legacy through the Mary Tyler Moore Vision Initiative
Dr. S Robert Levine will never forget howMary Tyler Moorelooked on their wedding day.
Speaking with PEOPLE about his collaboration withFrances Valentine's co-founder and CEO Elyce Arons to celebrate the actress' style legacy, Levine shares some heartwarming memories of the two on their special day.
"In preparing for this conversation, I was looking back at pictures of Mary, her style, and how I would express what she liked, and how she came to her personal style," he shares. "So, one of the things that I reflected on was the wedding dress that she designed for our wedding, because she had gone out and got some vintage lace for her wedding dress. It was peach in color with this beautiful vintage lace."
"But then, looking through our wedding album, there was a moment. I was a young cardiologist. I was a full-time faculty member in cardiology at Mount Sinai. Mary had just moved to New York in 1980. We were married in 1983, and all of her buddies from the show came to New York," he recalls.
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The guests who shared in their happiness that day were a big part of what made it special. "We've got these great pictures of the whole cast ofThe Mary Tyler Moore Showwho came to the wedding, as well as Mary's best buddies, and all her dance girls came," he says.
Levine also recalls what might have been their favorite moment from the day, which was also the day before Thanksgiving that year.
"There was a moment in time when some of my colleagues at Mount Sinai, who were observant Jews, they actually all lifted Mary up on a chair, lifted me up, and that was whole thing," he notes. "And the tradition in Orthodoxy is that you're supposed to separate men and women. So, we took this long kind of napkin and Mary held one side of it, I held the other, and our families and friends tossed us, in the chairs, up. And the joy on her face, mine too, in that moment ... that was very special."
Courtesy Dr. S Robert Levine
Also special to Levine is continuing the work of theMary Tyler Moore Vision Initiative, an important piece of honoring the late actress' memory.
"With the opportunities that we've created that are relevant to Mary and Mary's collections," he shares. "It all starts with 'How do we give Mary back to the community that loved her?' And 'How do we then use the love that folks had for Mary to help support her legacy project?' "
Of his recent auction of Moore's possessions as he prepared to move out of the home they shared, as well as choosing items that will one day live in a museum exhibit dedicated to Moore, he continues, "The painful process of going through what to keep, and what to offer was very tough. I mean, the house that I just left, Mary and I had built together. We literally found a beautiful site. There was a lovely old home there that had the right footprint that we basically tore down, and reused all the old materials to rebuild something that was uniquely Mary and a reflection of her vision."
Courtesy Dr. S Robert Levine
"It also accommodated what we knew was going to be the future at that point," he acknowledges, referring to Moore's vision loss from diabetic retinal disease.
"So, we put all the beautiful things that we had in our Manhattan apartment, as well as our horse farm, in this one site, so that Mary could be surrounded by all of the beautiful things that she had collected over her lifetime with me and before," he notes. "So, you can imagine that the process of sorting through it all was difficult. But what I came to in it was simply that I can't hold onto everything, and many of her things should have another life, because others should be able to appreciate, and find joy in them."
As for what he did hold onto, Levine adds, "I get to now be surrounded by those things in more of a tighter hug than I had in the big house, because we're smaller now. So, I have all the really very important things to me that come from our collections right here with me, as opposed to being scattered around a big house. So, that's actually a nice thing."
Read the original article onPeople
