Chris Christie and his wife keep their spats in Mrs. Christie's walk-in closet

(Image credit: Kena Betancur/Getty Images)

published 20 January 2016

Maintaining a healthy marriage is difficult — but you wouldn't know it by looking at most picture-perfect political families. In a new book by WNYC's Matt Katz, American Governor, New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie comes clean about the struggles he and his wife Mary Pat Foster have faced in their marriage.

Christie and Foster married in their early 20s, and keeping the relationship afloat as they grew together took time. "I don't know what either one of us thought marriage was exactly going to be like, but what was happening was not what we thought," Christie said. So the couple went through marital counseling and waited seven years to have children together — when they finally felt like they "definitely liked each other."

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"You go to some party with your wife, right?" Mr. Christie explained. "And this invariably happens to every married couple — something happens at the party, whatever.""The great moment is when you get into the car and go," and here he uses an expletive: "'Are you kidding me?' And you have it out. So by the time you get home, it's washed out.""Would you want to do that in front of a New Jersey state trooper?" he asked."So," Mr. Christie continued, "what happens is you seethe, you're staring at each other. And then we usually go into her closet to fight." [The New York Times]

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Jeva Lange was the executive editor at TheWeek.com. She formerly served as The Week's deputy editor and culture critic. She is also a contributor to Screen Slate, and her writing has appeared in The New York Daily News, The Awl, Vice, and Gothamist, among other publications. Jeva lives in New York City. Follow her on Twitter.