It’s Kind of a Funny Story: Elettra Wiedemann and James Marshall

Leandra Medine: How did you guys meet?

Elettra Wiedemann: You tell the story.

James Marshall: We actually met at a party hosted by Mikhail Gorbachev–

EW: Not just a party, a ball.

JM: Sorry, a white bowtie and tails ball. It was bascially like the Met Ball this year, but at King Henry VIII’s old house, Hampton Court Palace. The party was hosted by Mikhail Gorbachev and I went with an actress friend of mine because her boyfriend was shooting a movie. She’s a friend so I wanted to be her wingman. It was one of those balls where I think Dolce and Gabbana flew in to dress her for the event, which was kind of mind-boggling for me.

LM: So casual!

EW: Not intimidating at all.

JM: I wasn’t really involved in the fashion world at all. I was very much outside of it, not having much fashion sense at all. So the driver picks us up to take us to Hampton Court Palace, and of course you go through the gates, and the first person you see is this ballet dancer on a plinth. 200 feet away is a violinist. 200 feet further there’s another ballet dancer on a plinth doing ballet.

EW: Did I make this up or was there a guy with a falcon too? Did I just tell that as a joke that has now become apart of the story?

JM: I’m not sure I saw a falcon…

EW: Okay, we’re just going to say there was a falcon. Because Hampton Court Palace is in the middle of all of these fields, so you’re in a palace and then there are all these incredible surrounding fields with people dotted around them.

JM: Like gardens.

EW: And there were deer…

LM: So how did you properly meet?

EW: Wait — can I tell my version of the story of how I got there?

I was on the Eurostar going from Paris to London, and I get a phone call from my agent saying, “Oh, um, Mikhail Gorbachev is inviting you to his ball.” And I was like, “Whatever, haha.” And they were like, “No really! And Giambattista Valli has asked for you to be his date.” I didn’t know him personally so it was all very weird. So I literally get to London, get whisked off to this showroom, grab this incredible dress from this person I don’t know, get all dressed up the next night–

And then I get a phone call as I’m waiting in my gown to get picked up, from Giambattista who’s in the lobby, and he’s like, “Darling, we’re downstairs for you.” So I get into the car and there’s Giambattista, and Naomi Campbell. I’d never met either of them before so it was completely crazy! I felt like Cinderella — changed into a gown, hanging out with these incredible people and then whisked off, literally, to a palace.

JM: We were sitting at the same table. Going to these events you see these magnificent people, and it’s often very intimidating because you have Elton John sitting over there, and Sir Ranulph Fiennes–

LM: Right, there are “Sirs.”

JM: Literally, people who have been knighted by the Queen. There are royals and Russian billionaires. So you know, I’m Joe “nobody” Shmoe and I’ve got my actress friend on my right, her actor friend on the other side of her, and someone else I can’t remember. Elettra was sitting right across from me. I was on my best behavior because my friend was there and I wanted to make sure she was okay. I wanted to be a good wingman. But I just kept getting distracted by the smile of this girl sitting opposite me.

EW: I was very smiley because they kept refilling my vodka all night. It was a Russian party so they had these little shot glasses, and whenever you would turn your head it would be refilled.

JM: It’s not very polite to have an empty glass on the table, so they constantly fill you up. So as the evening goes on, I’m staying two or three drinks behind everyone else because I’m with my friend and I want to make sure she’s okay. I’m kind of looking around, taking it all in, and my eyes keep on going back to Elettra because she’s sitting opposite me.

Elton John goes to the stage, says a few words and then starts singing “Tiny Dancer.” All I can do is look at Elettra. I feel embarrassed that I can’t stop looking at this girl. I was a little bit shy in approaching her because I’ve never met her before, and she’s so beautiful. She’s like 6’3 in heels. Obviously she’s got to be married, or she’s got to have a boyfriend. So I didn’t want to embarrass myself.

LM: Or maybe she thought you were with your girlfriend, right? Because you were with another woman.

JM: That’s true. So I kept walking towards her, and every time I’d get within six feet, I’d kind of wander off. And then I’d come back and there’d be some Russian billionaire or some movie star chatting her up. Of course, I’d then veer off to the bathroom, because I didn’t want to look like…you know. But then I thought, Well, maybe she thinks I’ve got some sort of drug problem because I keep going to the bathroom. 

Eventually–

EW: No, I sat down next to you. Because I went to the bathroom and then when I came back, my feet were hurting so much. I just needed a break, and then we started talking…

JM: I don’t even know what we said. Everything kind of went into a misty phase. I heard Elettra and I was like, “Oh my god, you’re American.” I didn’t want to assume she was Canadian or American so I asked, “Are you American?” And she says, “Yeah, I’m from New York.” And I was like, “Oh my god, I’m moving there in a few months.” So she’s says, “Oh wow, who do you know in New York?” “Absolutely nobody,” I said. I knew one guy, I was going there for work. So Elettra, being polite, says, “When you get there, give me a call and I’ll show you around and introduce you to a few people.”

So on a tiny scrap of paper — which she got off of her name card — Elettra wrote her phone number and her e-mail. Of course, I’m totally buzzing. So, fast forward a few months I move to New York, and I didn’t bother to phone Elettra. Why would I? She’s just being polite. She’s probably married and I’m reading too much into this. So I got into this mental phase of, Do I phone her, do I not phone her? Of course she’s married, of course she has a boyfriend. Why would she want to go out with someone like me? I’m a nobody. 

LM: It’s funny that you would assume she’s married, I mean she’s quite young. You’re both young.

JM: Married or unavailable.

LM: Do English people say “married” for all relationship walks?

JM: Well for me, if you’re with someone, you’re as good as married.

LM: That’s a very noble way of looking at it. I think more men should probably adopt that.

JM: Yeah. So two or three months went by and I decided to work late one night — I think it was a Thursday or Friday night — it must have been 8 or 9 o’clock. I was on the subway, catching up on the day’s news, and the 1 train pulls into the station. The doors open and on walks this girl who makes me instantly blush. I got so red. I instantly blushed. She sat right opposite me, and she looked at me and I looked at her and we both kind of smiled at each other.

EW: We didn’t recognize each other because the night we met we were in ball gowns and tux tails.

JM: I was wearing a white bowtie and tails, and she was wearing this Giambattista gown, and was 6’5. It was bonkers. So we kind of connect with each other visually, and I kind of smile at her, she smiles at me, you know, in that kind of embarrassed, “Oh my god she caught me looking at her” way. But neither of us thought we knew each other. So the train pulls into Elettra’s station, she stands up and as she turns I see her side profile. I realize I’ve met this girl before. It takes a couple of seconds and I realize, “Oh my god, it’s the girl from the Gorbachev party.”

So she gets off the train and I run towards the door, and the door closes!

EW: And actually, I had gotten on that train accidentally. I had taken the wrong train and I went three stops in the wrong direction before I realized. I was fidgeting with my first iPod I think.

JM: Thanks to Steve Jobs then, really. So I run to the door and the doors close. But you know how on the tube the doors close and then they open again? So I have my hand by the door so I can grab them and open them up, but they never opened. Then the train pulls out of the station, and I’m hands and face on the glass like…I’m not even sure if I remembered your name to be honest. So Elettra’s walking down the platform and the train pulls out of the station. I get off at the next stop, run home, run up my three flights of stairs to my little apartment on Perry street, and hunt for this tiny scrap of paper with her number on it.

I’m throwing everything out of my boxes, and I see at the bottom of a box — just sitting there — this little scrap of paper with Elettra’s name and e-mail on it. So I basically text Elettra, “Sorry, probably not you, sorry” — fifty sorrys in the first sentence — “but if it was you, then hi!” In my head I was thinking–

LM: Will you marry me?

JM: Well I was thinking, I wanted to say, “Hopefully you’re single and you’re not with anybody.” But I didn’t say that, I just bumbled over my words.

EW: And I wrote you back! I never wrote back to guys who texted.

JM: Elettra wrote me back in a couple of minutes. She’s like, “Hi, yeah I thought I recognized you…”

EW: Then we went on a date. Well I think it took two weeks for us to get our acts together. We organized a date and then at the last second before the date I’m thinking, What the fuck am I doing? This guy could be a total rapist ax-murderer. I don’t know this guy! So I call eight of my friends and I’m like, “You’re coming on a date with me.”

LM: Eight!?

EW: Yes. I showed up at Rosa Mexicana in Chelsea with eight friends. James–

JM: I’m of course excepting a date. I mean, I almost bought flowers, for crying out loud. Can you imagine how embarrassed I would have been?

EW: I’m sorry babe. My mom trained me to be so paranoid.

JM: So what do I do? Is this a date or is this not a date? 

EW: But that night we — my friends kind of vetted you for me — had a fun dinner.

JM: We had a really fun dinner. Super light. It was actually good to have Elettra’s friends there.

EW: It made it less awkward. So we had dinner with them and then I think you and I peeled off after, to have drinks just us two.

JM: Yeah. As the evening went on, I think we realized there was chemistry there, because at one point we were holding hands under the table. Which is very sweet, and I think people started to get the message that we wanted some alone time.

EW: From that date we were just kind of — we never had that conversation where it was like, Do you want to go steady?” — it never felt like we were game-playing.

JM: It’s not the British way.

EW: He was very shocked when he moved here that people date multiple people. In the UK, if you’re dating somebody then you’re with one person.

JM: Right. I wasn’t dating anyone else and I assumed Elettra wasn’t either, so I didn’t think it was necessary to have a conversation about it.

EW: We got together and four years later, we got married. At the wedding, James made an amazing speech which was really funny and kind of summarized this story for everybody. At the end of the speech he had gotten the paper with my number on it framed to give to me, and I just burst into tears in front of everybody. It’s usually hanging up but we just had our apartment painted last week. It was this tiny piece of paper with my Gorbachev place setting on it.

LM: Where did you get married?

EW: The official story is that we got married at City Hall. But actually, we got married in the ICU ward at Beth Israel Hospital. I wanted to get married at City Hall. I feel like so much of my job is to dress up and get my picture taken, so for my day I just really wanted to be with my husband and then have a party with all of my friends where we would have a blast. But I didn’t need that moment where I felt like a princess, because I feel like a princess a lot and I don’t need to do that.

My grandparents had been together for 65 or 66 years, and they’re — from both of our families — the longest married couple we know. We thought it made sense to have them be the witnesses as a blessing to our marriage. So we thought we’d get married at City Hall, and then we’d go–

JM: We didn’t invite anybody else.

EW: Yeah, nobody was there except my grandparents. My grandmother had a stroke two days before. I knew I wanted to marry James but I really knew I wanted to marry James when my grandmother had the stroke. She got sent to the ICU and I was like, What do we do? Everybody was in town. Do we cancel the party? Do we get married without her? That would break her heart. And James was like, “Fuck it, why can’t we get married at the hospital?” I said, “You’re right!”

So we got married at the hospital. Thankfully, one of my mom’s best friends is one of the head nurses there so he arranged for us to have a secret side room that was empty. It was full of defibrillators and heart attack posters. My cousin had been randomly ordained two years prior to marry another friend, so we called him at the last second. We got married at Beth Israel with my grandparents and my cousin, and then had a big party at James’ restaurant, Whitehall.

JM: The nurses at the hospital were absolutely fantastic. They cleared out the room, they got doughnuts for us. They put up some carnations.

EW: At our wedding we had Coca Cola, doughnuts from Dunkin’ Donuts and red carnations.

LM: So this was two and a half years ago. When did you open your restaurant?

JM: It’ll be three years in November.

LM: Did you come to New York to work in hospitality?

JM: Oh no. I actually worked for a big corporate American company in London, and they brought me to New York to help develop their entertainment and media team. So I helped launch that and it was great. I loved the job in many aspects…good money, but I just wasn’t happy.

EW: Soul crushing

JM: Soul crushing, yeah. To have 14 hour days, six days a week, and then you’re working some Sundays.

LM: Seems like we are not measuring our success in dollars anymore — the narrative of the American Dream is changing — we just want to be happy. It’s so fulfilling to see that sort of eclipsing money. I think people are starting to realize that the reason we want money is because we think it’ll make us happy.

JM: I just finished filming this documentary series called, “The American Dream Project.” The whole concept is that we’re bombarded with all of these messages about how bad America is, how money is so important, how reality TV is helping us have a self-loathing image of ourselves, or this picture of what we think happiness is. We’re told the American dream is dead, blah blah blah. So a friend and I basically rode from NYC to California on Indian motorcycles, and only stayed with people we met on social media. The soul purpose was to try and shine a spotlight on great, everyday Americans who aren’t billionaires, but normal people.

EW: From my perspective, I think when we were growing up there was this message of, The sky is the limit, you can do anything. You can always have more wealth… And so we always want more. From my perspective, you can have a really fantastic, fulfilling and comfortable life without killing yourself in a soulless job. So it’s that kind of shift where it’s like, Okay, I can kill myself… And then everybody says that millennials suck because they don’t work hard and sometimes I’m like, Maybe they learned a lesson from you. You guys killed yourself to basically retire. I’m fine having X amount of dollars and a small apartment. We’re cozy, who cares?

JM: Also, look at the era, the previous generations. When I was a kid, people had the same job for 30 or 40 years. They would clock in and clock out for the sole purpose of getting to 65 to retire. Now I think people are seeing that this generation is retiring at 65 and dropping dead two years later. The payoff is just not there. You’ve got all of this money and the return doesn’t exist.

What’s interesting about that is that the old thought process was that you’d retire at 65 and then stop living. But actually, people don’t want to stop working. It’s absolutely rubbish; people want to stop doing what they don’t want to do.

LM: That’s a very important distinction.

JM: My philosophy when I quit three years ago was to promise myself that I would never do a job that I hated ever again. You think to yourself, What am I risking? When you’re in  the corporate world you have this structure, this process around you, a paycheck every month; I’m risking that if I leave. Actually, risk is the other way around. You’re risking wasting all of these valuable years in a job that drives you down and tears your relationship apart, for money that–

EW: That’s going to actually be inherited by somebody else, right? I mean you’re not going to actually enjoy most of the money you make anyways.

JM: But look at Warren Buffett, he’s going to provide his family with a decent inheritance, a few million dollars — most people would be grateful for that — but he’s not going to give them the billions. I totally agree with that. The fact is that they’re getting a few million dollars. To be debt-free and have that kind of cash is incredible.

EW: We went off the rails of the actual conversation…

LM: Well I was actually going to ask about Impatient Foodie. Why did you decide to start it?

EW: I’m 31 — and, you know this industry — I’ve had an incredible career. I started modeling when I was 18/19, I never thought that I would have the opportunities I’ve had in the fashion business, but I’ve had an incredible time. I’ve traveled the world. I was able to buy this apartment. I’ve had all of these incredible experiences thanks to fashion. But I always knew in the back of my mind that it’s a finite thing. It’s very rare to have a career like Naomi’s or Christy’s where you’re 44/45, and still booking these incredible campaigns.

I always wanted to have a plan B for myself, and when I went to grad school five or six years ago, I focused on food politics and the politics of feeding urban populations. When I came back, I was very grateful to not be in academia anymore, but I couldn’t shake what I’d learned about food and the importance of it in terms of not only our health, but the wider health of the planet. So I launched a few projects. Goodness was one of them, it was a pop-up restaurant that did really well but overwhelmed me.

I gave birth to Impatient Foodie because I wanted something where I could take everything I learned from fashion in terms of making things look beautiful but also putting a spotlight on stuff that’s important to me like, how to source your food, and when and where to source it. Frankly, I wanted to celebrate food. I feel like especially in the U.S., people are so complex when it comes to food, it’s not something that people enjoy. Usually it’s something that tortures people. What I realized in my studies is that we’re so lucky to have so much food. It’s a miracle to have all of this food, and if it was gone, in a matter of days the civilization would unwind.

I wanted to have a food site that celebrated food and wasn’t like, Here’s how to make a stuffing but with less calories. Who cares! Enjoy the fucking stuffing. Just have a day when you’re with your family and you can enjoy it and it’s great! I launched it in July, and I thought it was going to take a year or two to get off the ground, but I was very wrong about that. Now it’s kind of my full time thing. James is my guinea pig for all of my recipes.

LM: It’s interesting that you guys met at a fork and are…not working in the same industry but with the same currency, essentially. Do you ever implement her recipes into the restaurant?

JM: Elettra’s food is damn good. So we wanted to have an Impatient Foodie menu that we would run periodically — which we may still do. Obviously running a restaurant is a complicated beast.

EW: I launched the Goodness popup and it was so much fun, but I’m totally traumatized. Running a restaurant is hard. So when they came to me with the idea I loved it, but I’m still traumatized from my experience and not quite ready for it yet. It was so built around me that I had to be involved in every single thing. People, as far as sponsors or business partners, they always want you. You are the “goldmine.” That’s why I’m kind of anonymous on Impatient Foodie. I never post pictures of myself. It’s in my voice, but I really want it to be something that speaks for itself. People consider themselves Impatient Foodies.

LM: It’s sort of like if you’re a really respected stylist and you build a team under you, all of your clients understand that whoever’s working with you has been approved by you. Just by virtue of that, they’ll be comfortable.

But back to the relationship, what have you found to be the easiest and conversely most difficult things about being married?

EW: I think the hardest thing about being married is not being able to just walk away. When you’re going through a hard time or you’re having an argument, you have this obligation to sit together and work it out. On the flip-side though, I think that that’s the best part about being married. It really forces you to confront your issues, to deal with your shit. We’re in our eighth year now, and I feel like since we’ve been married, we’ve grown so much stronger and closer in two years than in the previous six.

Someone said it best to us the other day. They said, “Being married prepares you for being married.” There’s something different and for me, very hard, but that I think has encouraged the growth and closeness in us, and in me. I’ve realized a lot about myself. I think if we were a couple who never decided to get married, I don’t know if I would have confronted those things the same way.

What about you?

JM: Well, I think that we’re all quite selfish individuals. When you’re in a marriage you really have to compromise. I do a “cup check” every once in a while to remind myself that marriage is all about compassion, understanding, and patience.

EW: So you do a “cup check” every once in a while.

JM: I cup check myself once every while, because I climb these mountains, run across desserts, ride across the country for a month at a time, and you can get caught up in your own magnificence of that moment. Sometimes I have to realize how compassionate and understanding Elettra is being with me. How patient she is. And there are times when I have to be that way for her. I have to dip into that well of credit.

When you’re on your own you can be selfish.

EW: James and I are so independent. We were raised to be so independent and in that sense it’s been a journey for us. I can go off all day and do work and he’s the same, so it’s been a journey for us to learn how to come together.

JM: I think that’s what so nice about being married. You’ve got someone that has your back when you’re having a down or dark day, that person can either give you space, or comfort you, or take you out for a martini and make you laugh.

We come from such different cultures and backgrounds, so we constantly learn from each other. My weaknesses are Elettra’s strengths and vice versa.

LM: If you were giving advice to your future child — let’s say daughter — who’s in pursuit of love, what would you say to her?

JM: My advice would be to keep your knickers on. I mean that. I think — especially in the New York culture — a lot of women think that men hold the power; that they just move on from one girl to the next and if they don’t give it up, the guy’s just going to move on anyway. I say, if that’s the case then let them move on. There has to be romance, mystery, and respect. I don’t mean respect in a boring way, everybody wants to have fun and get their rocks off.

But a guy’s not going to respect a girl unless she respects herself first. What attracted me to Elettra was the fact that she’s a strong woman, she’s financially independent, she’s emotionally independent — she’s got her own friends — and she wasn’t coming to me for any of that. We never needed to be together, we wanted to be together. So for love, I would say don’t rush into it. Let romance blossom. You have to work at being romantic. If people aren’t prepared to be romantic then they aren’t prepared to be in love.

EW: My advice would be to appreciate kindness from men. I think when I was younger, I know I met a lot of nice guys but for some reason they felt like less work, so somehow that felt less attractive, or something? And then James was a real game-changer for me because James is an incredibly kind human being. It’s actually what I cited about him in my wedding speech, as what attracted me most to James.

In life, of course you want love and you want to be attracted to the person, but above all, life is tough. You go through ups and downs — James and I are going through huge transitory moments in our careers — and at the end of the day, you want to come home to somebody who is really kind. If I had a daughter I would say, don’t go for the guy who’s kind of unavailable and an asshole because it feels more difficult for you. That’s one of the things that made me fall in love with James and ultimately decide that he would be my man for life.