Legal Eagle Wedding Watch: Out of Africa

We are in July -- peek wedding season. Take a look at these three newlywed couples and marvel at their credentials and overall fabulous qualities.

We don’t usually make predictions about the longevity of the marriages we cover. It just seems excessively harsh to say, “This couple is going to get divorced.”

But… this couple is going to get divorced. The 32-year-old grandson of Richard Nixon marries the 21-year-old daughter of a Greek billionaire in front of 700 guests, including Hillary Clinton and Henry Kissinger. At the Waldorf-Astoria reception, George Pataki grooves to a 24-piece orchestra playing AC/DC’s “You Shook Me All Night Long.” We give it two years.

But on to some more promising unions. Here are your latest Legal Eagle Wedding Watch finalists:

Elizabeth Smith and Richard Cotton

Chelsea Purvis and Alnawaz Jiwa

Chloë Schama and Michael Pyle

Read all about these wildly impressive couples, after the jump.

Elizabeth Smith and Richard Cotton

Sponsored

The Case:
– In a crowded field, this mature couple stands out. Distinguished ancestors dangle like toilet paper from the bride’s family tree: two major major players at Goldman Sachs, an ambassador to France, and the founder of the Corning glass company. She graduated from Scripps College and is the vice chairwoman of its board of trustees.
– The groom, a graduate of Harvard and Yale Law School, clerked for Justice William Brennan in 1970-71 and later was a senior aide to the secretary of the Department of Health, Education and Welfare. He’s now the general counsel of NBC Universal.

The Case Against:
– At a combined age of 124, this couple is a century older than the Nixon grandson’s bride. On the other hand, they’ve aged well. We like the craggy Kennedy-esque look the groom’s got going on.

Chelsea Purvis and Alnawaz Jiwa
(Buy them a chopper.)

The Case:
– We return to a younger, perkier demographic with this pair, whose love blossomed at Yale in a botany class. She later graduated summa, he magna. The bride also has a law degree from YLS.
– Chelsea, a Rhodes Scholar, has a fellowship to work on women’s rights in Africa. Al works for Goldman Sachs.

The Case Against:
– She’ll be working on “women’s rights in Africa,” but it’s more correct to say she’ll be working on the rights of Africa women… from London. We prefer the idealistic types when they actually get their hands a little dirty. But hey, Goldman Sachs probably doesn’t have an office in the Sudan.

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Chloë Schama and Michael Pyle
(Buy them a mattress pad.)

The Case:
– Can’t you just feel the sleek intellectual glamour radiating from this pair? No? Okay, we’ll convince you. The bride, a summa graduate of Harvard with a master’s in English from Cambridge, is the daughter of two genius Columbia professors. She’s the assistant managing editor of The New Republic and the author of a book with a nice-looking cover.
– The groom was summa at Dartmouth and has a JD from YLS. Until recently he was a senior adviser at Treasury; he’s now at the White House as a Special Assistant to the President, working on international and domestic economic policy.

The Case Against:
– Chloë and Michael were the subject of a couple of long-ago items on Underneath Their Robes. A3G quoted a New York Observer piece claiming that Chloë “resembles Claire Danes but is prettier” and referred to Michael as “Chloë Schama’s Ken doll.” At the time Michael was a clerk for Merrick Garland, a top-shelf feeder judge, and UTR speculated that it was “only a matter of time” before he’d be called up to the majors. Alas, he does not seem to have reached One First Street.

The Verdict:
– Screw these whippersnappers and their New-Republic-editing and women’s-rights-advocating. We’re awarding this week’s crown to the seasoned newlyweds (three former marriages between them!) who look like a couple of extras from Falcon Crest. Congratulations, Team Smith-Cotton.

Honorable Mention:
Laura Blinkhorn and Daniel Ryan (Northwestern)
Christina Franklin and Steven Gersh (Loyola)
Marc Hurel and Steven Perry (NYU, DLA Piper)
Ehi Oviasu and Daniel Kahn (2, Columbia)
Elizabeth Kim and John Connorton III (UPenn, Reed Smith)

The Rest:
Angela Hurdle and AdeRotimi Sijuwade (NYU)
Dawn Meyer and Christian Keeney (2, Villanova)
Allison Maimona and Stephen DeVito (Fordham)
Susannah Pollack and Benjamin Marsh (UPenn)
Sandra Coudert and Todd Graham (NYU)
Corinne Poole and Tyler Maulsby (Tulane)
Giselle Woo and Daniel Huron (HLS)
Megan Manfred and Timothy Petrella (NYU)
Daniella Rabbani and Daniel Sirkin (Georgetown, Willkie Farr)
Bridget Guarasci and Mani Potnuru (Michigan)
Sasha Ragovin-Polonsky and Adam Tulgan (Wash U)
Bridget Fallon and Brian Charville (Wake Forest)
Marnina Cherkin and Samuel Ostroff (UPenn)