Newly Widowed, Neil Rubenstein Reflects on a Life and a Marriage Well-Lived

Two days after his beloved wife Toby died, the often  jaunty but  now grieving Neil Rubenstein, one of the most familiar figures in the community, sat down early in the morning to revisit the landscape of their well-lived lives together.

­Fittingly, a political scenario provided the backdrop for their first meeting because political  activism was a beacon that illuminated their  33-year marriage.

Theirs was a whirlwind hundred-day courtship.

“On May 17, 1975, Mr. Rubenstein began, “I was invited to my older brother’s home in Northridge to attend a political party to elect Jimmy Carter President of the United States.

“Frank Mankiewicz, who ;later would become President Carter’s Press Secretary, was the evening’s speaker. I remember the date because it was the 13th birthday of Toby’s son David.

“It was also the same day as the
Armed Forces Day parade in Torrance. As a sergeant in the California Army National Guard, 40th Military Police Company, we were marching in the parade. Tro get into position, I had jumped off a 2 1/2-ton truck with the other military police. But I sprained my leg.

Injury Did Not Slow Him

“I still was invited to my brother’s house, and I took another lady with me, being single at the time. Later that evening, I felt a lot of discomfort in my leg. I sat down while the person I brought went to the ladies room.

“And who was I sitting next to but Toby. Here she was with her hair up, wearing a beautiful brown outfit, with brown tassels. She looked fan-tasss-tic. This was a starlet.

“And so we sat next to each other. I started cracking some jokes. She started laughing. I thought to myself, ‘Wow.’

“After a few minutes, here comes the girl I had brought. Now I had known her since she was 7 years old and I was 9.You should have seen the killer look on her face.

“The next day, I called my brother for Toby’s telephone number. Turned out she worked for Victor Gruen & Associations, the architectural/engineering firm. At the time, they were redesigning downtown for the Shah of Iran.

A Winning Beginning

“When I called to ask her out, Toby said ‘Sure.’

“So we met on my stepson David’s birthday, and (less than) four months later, we got married. Two weeks out of those four months, I was away at National Guard camp.

“One night about 2 1/2 months after our first meeting, we had a date to see a play at the Huntington Hartford Theatre on Vine Street. Afterward, we had supper at a fancy restaurant across the street. I was cutting my steak — I always ate steak — and I said to her casually, ‘Do you think you could ever get used to writing Toby Rubenstein on your checks?’ I didn’t even bother to look up. But I heard her say, ‘I could get used to that very easily.’
Okay. A few minutes later, I said, ‘What do you think about getting married in December?’ She says, ‘I like that idea.’

“I said ‘Okay.’ I still was not looking up. I said, ‘I think we are engaged.’ She said, ‘I think so, too.’

A Moving Target

“Every time we would talk on the telephone, or on a date, we would move the date up and up, until finally, on Aug. 29, she said, ‘I’ve got an idea. Why don’t we call up the airlines and fly off to Vegas, we’ll rent a car and we’ll get married over in Las Vegas.’ I said ‘Great,’ and we got married at the rabbi’s home in Las Vegas.”

Mr. Rubenstein remembered that he was drawn to his bride because “Toby was extremely intelligent, and she had a great personality. Her overall softness and her demeanor made everything possible. Now, unfortunately, on Sunday, when we put Toby to rest, that is my birthday after we had met on David’s birthday.”

The Color of Politics

As far as the couple’s Culver City friends were concerned, politics was a passion for both, and they shared common ideals.

Not quite. At least not in the beginning.

“When we got married,” Mr. Rubenstein said, “I was a registered Republican and a sergeant in the National Guard. Toby told me years later that she had had some concerns. Here was a right-wing extremist, which caused me to chuckle no end.

“A little before we got married, I told Toby, with a smile and a sense of laughter in my voice, ‘I don’t believe in mixed marriages. One of us is going to have to become a Republican.’ She said, ‘I don’t believe in mixed marriages, either. It looks as if one of us is going to have to become a Democrat.’

“The darnedest thing was, we followed separate courses although we weren’t emphatic one way or the other. But I few years later, I went on strike at my job, and hen we both decided we would not have a mixed marriage.”

The Value of Loyalty

Perhaps even more importantly for the new Democrat and for the veteran Democrat, they always were in lockstep on City Hall candidates in Culver City. Mr. Rubenstein recalled a City Council election in the1980s. Strangely to some of their friends, the couple endorsed all three incumbents who were running, even though one was left of center, one was a centrist and the third was right of center.

“Toby was asked how we could support candidates from the whole political spectrum,” Mr. Rubenstein said. “Her answer made me proud because it was what was fascinating and wonderful about Toby. ‘We support our friends,” she said. ‘When the election is over, win or lose, we are still friends. All these years, we have kept the same friends we always have had. And we are grateful for that.’

“We saw eye-to-eye on so many things. Our marriage probably shouldn’t have worked, but it did.

“Toby was raised in Brentwood, with all of its glamour, and I grew up down by Van Ness Avenue and the Imperial Highway, down by Southwest College. Her father probably had the biggest CPA agency in the area. He had a degree from UCLA. Her mom had a degree from UCLA. Toby had a degree from UCLA. I was going to L.A. State for teaching, but I left early.”

Making Retirement Work

Mr. Rubenstein was a relatively young man when he entered retirement, and therein lies a story. “The only reason I could retire early,” he said, “was that in the early 1980s, after her mother died, Toby decided to stay at home and take care of our investments.

“We saw eye-to-eye on politics, on financial security and retirement, al those things that break people up.

“Even though we came from very different neighborhoods — I grew up in a poor family — we both had the same values.”

Not long before Mr. Rubenstein stepped down from a 35-year career in the aerospace industry in ’00, his wife was found to have diabetes, and that began the decade-long trek that ended at 11 o’clock last Monday morning at Marina Hospital.

“Eight years ago, almost to the day,” said Mr. Rubenstein, “we took Toby to the hospital with hydro-cephalitis. After much prodding and pleading, as she was getting sicker and sicker, about 3:30 in the morning, Toby said, ‘Neil, I have to go to the hospital.’ We got her into the Emergency Room. They gave her morphine, and she promptly fell asleep for almost 2 1/2 weeks because the water from the hydro-cephalitis was collecting on her brain. She didn’t get properly diagnosed for quite some time.

Coming Close

“After the neurosurgeon finally was called, he told me that if they had waited another 18 hours before calling him, he would have done his best, but he could not have guaranteed anything. We never had any problems after that.

“Then all of a sudden this past October, Toby started getting sick again. I thought it was the hydro-cephalitis coming back because the symptoms were the same.”

During a one-week period, Mrs. Rubenstein underwent 4 CT scans, an ultra-sound, an EEG, nuclear medicine and chest x-rays.

“After that,” said her husband, “an MRI indicated she had a series of strokes, major and minor, and she started failing. At the end, with all the tubes and monitors, they could only guarantee two weeks. We had the rabbi come by. The doctors were there.

Funeral Arrangements




At 12 noon on Sunday, a funeral service will be held for Toby Rubenstein at Hillside Memorial Park.