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

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."

After so many years together, the Christies now have a strategy for settling disputes. Rather than fight in front of their kids (or, even worse, state troopers), the Christies prefer to keep it in the closet:

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