WASHINGTON -- As Newt Gingrich, the larger-than-life House speaker, indulges in his daily ritual bath of TV lights, cameras and microphones, his wife sits in a hotel restaurant across town, having lunch and a smoke by herself -- undisturbed, unrecognized, remarkably unknown.
Since becoming speaker, Mr. Gingrich has made several public references to his 43-year-old wife, Marianne, calling her his "best friend and closest adviser," crediting her with having the sense to put the kibosh on his $4.5 million book advance, pointing her out to President Clinton at the State of the Union address.
But the tall, pretty yet unglamorous, blue-eyed brunette has remained nearly invisible, as snug in her privacy as she is in the blue fox coat she snapped up at a super bargain price after Democrats stopped buying fur.
"She will not be a Hillary Clinton-type spouse of a public official," says Dave Johnson, a longtime friend in Mrs. Gingrich's Ohio hometown. "She will not be front and center."
But like the first lady, to whom Mrs. Gingrich has paid close attention, the speaker's wife is struggling to find her way as a political spouse, navigating through what has been for her very tricky terrain.
An informal adviser to her husband through their sometimes rocky 14-year marriage, Mrs. Gingrich is now trying to juggle her responsibilities as the wife of the nation's hottest Republican with a new, full-time job recruiting U.S. businesses for a free trade zone in Israel.
Her job as a vice president with the Israel Export Development Company Ltd. -- a private company of U.S. businessmen, including CBS Chairman Laurence Tisch and clothing magnate Sy Sims -- is not an ordinary one for a political spouse. In fact, she has enlisted lawyers to review her job for potential ethical conflicts with her husband's work.
But to date, Mrs. Gingrich has been such a behind-the-scenes player in her husband's political life that associates say her business contacts don't always make the connection.
Friends say Mrs. Gingrich has never been comfortable in the limelight; in the early 1980s, after her 1981 marriage to the just-divorced congressman, she didn't even want her picture in the paper.
Today, concerned that she has not yet honed her image and feeling unprepared for the spotlight, she declines requests for on-the-record interviews and has even taught her 79-year-old mother in Leetonia, Ohio, how to politely hang up on reporters.
Not that Mrs. Gingrich is shy. On the contrary, she is approachable and assertive, an enormously likable woman with an easy personality, girlish giggle and a decidedly non-Beltway -- and non-Newtian -- demeanor.
She shares her husband's interest in information-age culture and conservative ideals, but she also enjoys working in her spare time as an "image consultant" for BeautiControl Cosmetics of Dallas, selling moisturizer and mascara and doing beauty make-overs for friends, neighbors, and even congressional wives and daughters.
When top doctors in Atlanta failed to solve her acute back problems, she found relief from a shiatsu practitioner and is now a believer in alternative medicine.
Friends say she is guileless, independent-minded and smart -- ,, "unassumingly smart," says TV commentator Mary Matalin, a longtime friend of the Gingriches -- a down-to-earth contrast to her husband's cosmic and calculating persona.
"She's a strong, quiet presence in his life," says the Rev. Dwight Ike Reighard, their pastor in Georgia. "She's deep water."
For his part, Mr. Gingrich admits what others say in private: "If I listened to her 20 percent more, I'd get in a lot less trouble."
Indeed, while Mr. Gingrich struggled with his decision to forgo a controversial $4.5 million book advance, it was said to be an easy call for his wife. That much money just didn't feel right. If it didn't feel right to her, she concluded, it wouldn't feel right to the country.
The railroad cuts right through the middle of Leetonia, the tiny, old manufacturing town in eastern Ohio where young, scrawny Marianne Ginther grew up in a staunch Republican family, and where her late father, Harry, a manager for Metropolitan Life Insurance, was mayor.
With plans to be an architect, she attended Kent State University, witnessing from afar the 1970 shooting of four students by the National Guard during an anti-war protest.
Met after fund-raiser
Depressed by the shooting in which a dorm mate was one of those killed, she left without a degree but with a job designing houses for a developer. She worked at the Trumbull County (Ohio) Planning Commission, eventually becoming director, and in 1981 briefly took a job in the personnel office of the U.S. Secret Service to get to Washington.
vTC She met Mr. Gingrich after a political fund-raiser in Ohio in 1980. Mr. Gingrich has said that he and Marianne started talking then -- and never stopped.
They married in August 1981, six months after Mr. Gingrich's bitter, and in Georgia, much publicized, divorce from Jackie Gingrich, his wife of 19 years and the mother of their two daughters.
Initially, Mr. Gingrich tried to involve his new wife as much as possible in his political life, much as he had with his first wife, who had been constantly by his side as he tried to launch his career.
But those around the couple say Marianne Gingrich was unenthusiastic about entering the fray. "She was like a duck out of water," says one longtime associate.
She spent the mid-1980s obtaining a degree at Georgia State College in Atlanta, while her husband spent most of his time building his reputation in Washington, camping out in the modest one-bedroom apartment across from the Capitol that is still their D.C. home.
Likewise, she was never a major presence on the campaign trail, although she managed the volunteers in his 1988 and 1990 re-election efforts.
David Worley, a Democrat who ran against Mr. Gingrich in those two elections, recalls that when Mr. Gingrich refused to shake hands with him after a particularly contentious debate, Mrs. Gingrich followed suit and refused to shake his wife's hand. "It was very characteristic of Gingrich," says Mr. Worley. "I don't think it was characteristic of her."
Sensitive to criticism
What may have been characteristic, however, was her sensitivity to criticism about her husband -- and herself.
In her only brush with the spotlight, and headlines, she bolted from a 1989 Washington news conference and broke into tears after she and her husband were questioned about the propriety of a partnership set up to promote "Window of Opportunity," a book they wrote.
"I just couldn't stand it anymore," she said at the time.
That episode -- which still rankles her -- coincided with problems in their marriage, sparked, friends say, by Mr. Gingrich's oversized political appetite and constant travels.
"It would be like, 'Excuse me, can I have your attention today?' " says Walter K. Krauth III, the former Clayton County (Ga.) Republican chairman. "When Newt is working, he is obsessed with work."
The candid Mrs. Gingrich admitted in a 1989 Washington Post article that their marriage had been "off and on for some time."
"You marry to get married, not because you want to change the world," she said then, referring to her husband's mission. "We can do that without being married."
For his part, Mr. Gingrich gave the marriage a 53-47 shot of lasting, the article said.
Friends say Mrs. Gingrich eventually made her peace with her husband's lifestyle and has become more comfortable in the political milieu. "I don't know how she came to grips with it," says Mr. Krauth. "But she has. Definitely."
Never active in traditional congressional spousal pursuits in the past, she has decided to focus on issues that affect the modern-day political spouse, concerns that obviously stem from her own travails.
She co-chaired a "family friendly" committee set up last fall to build family concerns into House members' schedules and lives.
"Often spouses are the last to know things," says JoAnn Emerson, wife of Missouri Rep. Bill Emerson. "She feels very, very strongly we need to be more in the loop."