Boy you wouldn't want to do this today, because you'd definitely be called a pedophile, right?
The Game of Love
Cover Story: The Game of Love - Vol. 41 No. 11
The Game of Love
The Game of Love
Karen S. Schneider
March 28, 1994 12:00 PM
IT COULD HAVE BEEN A SKIT OIN SEINFELD. Real-life Jerry Seinfeld, comedian, TV star and life observer, was strolling through Central Park one day in May 1993 when he spotted a stranger he now calls “the most wonderful girl in the world.” Seinfeld, then 38, sallied over, made small talk and went away with the telephone number of Shoshanna Lonstein—then 17 and a senior at the private Nightingale-Bamford School in Manhattan.
Seinfeld says it was a simple case of acquaintance-making, with “the age issue,” as he calls it, immediately “forgotten.” Other people, however, didn’t forget it. Howard Stern homed in on the May-August aspect of the relationship when the radio host interviewed his old friend last spring. “So,” Stern said, feigning moral indignation, “you sit in Central Park and have a candy bar on a string and pull it when the girls come?”
Amazingly, Seinfeld, master of his comedy domain, was flustered. “She’s not 17, definitely not,” he initially insisted. Then, returning to the Stern show a month later for another attempt at spin control, he still seemed a bit defensive. “I didn’t realize she was so young,” he said. “This is the only girl I ever went out with who was that young. I wasn’t dating her. We just went to a restaurant, and that was it.”
Except that, as time passed, the relationship changed. For months now, Seinfeld and Lonstein have quietly gone about the business of getting to know one another. At George Washington University in Washington, where Lonstein, now 18, enrolled in September, the couple walk arm in arm across campus when Seinfeld pops in for an occasional visit. On weekend trips to Los Angeles, where he tapes his show”, they have eggs and cheesecake with his friends and cast members at Jem’s Famous Deli in Studio City before heading off to spend an afternoon shooting hoops in the park. “I think it’s serious between them,” says Seinfeld’s close friend, comedian George Wallace. “She’s beautiful and mature. She’s good for him.” Adds Seinfeld’s manager of 14 years, George Shapiro: “I’ve never seen him happier.”
Cover Story: The Game of Love - Vol. 41 No. 11
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