| LUCKY LUCIANO |
| After a tumultuous first marriage and a walk on the wildside, AW's JEL has found what she's always wanted |
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by Anne Marie Allocca SOAP OPERA MAGAZINE September 1997 (approx) These days Judi Evans Luciano looks forward to wrapping up her scenes as AW's Paulina Carlino early in the day. Once her work is done, she rushes home to spend quality family time with her 16-month-old son, Austin, and loving husband, Michael Luciano. "From the beginning Michael was such a tender, gentle, caring, sweet, intelligent man that I immediately felt safe with him, Luciano says. "I never felt safe with anyone in my life. Even to this day, I've been waiting for the other shoe to drop. And it never has." Not that they don't have their share of quarrels. "We fight like anybody fights. We shout expletives at each other, but we never make fun of each other. We say, 'I'm leaving,' 'No, I'm leaving' and, of course, neither one of us is leaving," Luciano says with a grin. "Even in that way we're closer. We know we're not going anywhere. I can say that what I feel because he'll still love me tomorrow." The divorced actress wasn't looking for a spouse when she started dating Michael. "I didn't want to marry again," she admits. "It's not that I didn't believe in marriage, I didn't believe in marriage for me. I never really thought I'd meet someone I liked enough. But I liked Michael immediately; I respected him so much. He was so much fun, he was so loving and lovable. Michael is not a mean person. My ex-husband thought it was funny, if you gained five pounds, to make fun of how fat you were," adds Luciano, who has been laboring to return to her pre-pregnancy weight. "Michael would never, even in an argument, do that." Luciano met her first husband, businessman Robert Eth, when she was playing Adrienne Kiriakis on DAYS. In the late '80s, motherhood was the furthest thing from her mind. "I was a bit of a wild person back then," she admits. "I was single and I didn't think about the future. I lived for the moment. Sometimes it wasn't too safe, but I really didn't think about it. Then one day I woke up and said, 'Okay, it's time to get my act together. ' " Looking back, Luciano realizes she knew she was making a mistake before she married him. "I didn't love him and...I knew it. When I started to walk out during the wedding march, I stopped. My dad was holding my arm. I said, 'Dad, I can't do this.' My dad said, 'You're just nervous.' Once I was out there, I had to perform. I paid for the wedding. I paid for everything. I paid and paid in more ways than monetarily. "He seemed like a nice guy at the time," she adds. "He seemed like a normal person, which he wasn't." In 1991, Luciano left her "lucrative job" at DAYS to move East to salvage her marriage to Eth. She had no job, a crumbling marriage and no prospects. Her agent mentioned that the role of Paulina was up for grabs, and a few weeks later, Luciano was part of the AW cast. While her professional life was on an upswing, her personal life was spiraling downward. Finally, Luciano walked out on her marriage, confident she'd given it her all to try to make it work. At the time, she wasn't feeling too upbeat about matrimony. "I thought, 'I don't think I want to be married again," Luciano remembers. "I don't need to be married to be a full person.' I thought, 'Men will come in and out of my life and that's cool. I certainly don't want anybody controlling any aspect of my life, my career, my finances--nothing. I will have children. I'll have my career. I'll have myself. I'll have my dignity and I don't need to be married to be a full person. I want the man who's at least 80 percent of what I want. It didn't take Luciano long to find that man, at Yakity Yaks, a club in Clifton, N.J. In fact, she already knew Michael Luciano. "She tapped me on the shoulder and asked me if I wanted to dance," Michael remembers. "I didn't even know she was in the bar. I turned around and I see this beautiful blonde asking me to dance. I said, 'Okay, sure.' We started dancing and I said, 'I know you.' She thought I was going to say from the soap, but it was actually from horseback riding." Seven years earlier, they met at a stable in New Jersey, where both kept horses. At the time, Luciano was GL's Beth--a role for which she won an Emmy--and Michael watched the soap. "I was walking by her, pulling my horse off after a ride, and I caught her from the corner of my eye," Michael remembers. "I recognized her. I got up the courage to say hello, and we talked for about 10 minutes and that was it. My college wasn't far away from the stable, so I'd go up there on breaks or after school hoping to run into her. A couple of times I ran into her at a distance, and I'd be watching her through the woods, almost stalking her," he says with a laugh. "It's almost like fate brought us together," Michael says of their reintroduction at the bar. "And I almost didn't go to the bar that night, I was forced to go." But had Luciano not been so forthright the two might not have gotten together that night. "I had to force him to take my phone number," Luciano recalls. "He thought it would be too presumptuous to ask for my number. I kept telling him I had to leave and he kept kissing my hand saying, 'Well, nice to meet you again.' He seemed interested, and then I said, 'You do want my number, don't you?' And he said, 'I'd love to have it.' " For the next six weeks, the two had long chats on the phone--even playing Truth or Dare--- but no date. Finally, Luciano became impatient. "I finally said, 'Okay, are you gay?' Then he explained the situation. He was ending another relationship. Very few men had been that up front with me, so I appreciated that." From their first date, Luciano felt relaxed with Michael. "It was the first time I've ever been with anyone in my life, including family, that I was that comfortable with immediately," she maintains. "He picked me up, and I was over-dressed as usual," she says, laughing. "I got in his car and it was as if I'd been next to this man all my life. It was so cool. We went to dinner in Hoboken, at a place called Arthur's--it's on the water. We knew a lot about each other. We started talking about fishing and I said, 'I'd love to go fishing.' " A boat was docked, so they rushed to a Kmart to buy casual clothes. "We ran to a liquor store for tequila, cigarettes and a six-pack of Rolling Rock. But we get to the dock and the boat's gone. So we sat on the beach until four o'clock in the morning, talking and drinking Rolling Rocks. Unbeknownst to me, he saved one of the Rolling Rocks." The Lucianos tied the knot at their New Jersey home on Nov. 20 four years ago. "For our wedding toast, he pulls out this Rolling Rock from our first date," Luciano says. Although her divorce came through only 10 days before her second wedding, Luciano had no qualms about walking down the aisle this time. "I had not one ounce of fear marrying this man," she insists. "Not one second thought. I couldn't wait." Sixteen months ago--on May 26, 1996--the Lucianos welcomed their first child, Austin Michael. The rigors of parenthood have taken their toll on the Lucianos' two-career household. "Right now Michael has to work his eight-hour job (he's a cameraman for CNBC), plus two hours of drive time, come home and take care of the baby," Luciano says. "I'm usually working in the morning and afternoon, so it's hard on him. Then there are times when I say, 'Poor you? Poor me.' We're both stressed out. We're both exhausted. We don't have a baby-sitting network, so we don't get out much." Although juggling motherhood and a career isn't easy, you won't hear Luciano complaining. "I love my job and I am very lucky that I can bring my son to work," she says. Even with her busy schedule, Luciano always finds time in her life for the people she cares about, such as her best friend, Mindi Schulman, AW's fan club president. "Judi's very loving, supportive and always there when you need her--even at two a.m. She's available for her friends 24 hours a day. She's there for the good and the bad. Most of all, she's not judgmental. Judi accepts me and everyone in her life for who they are--whether you're fat or skinny, ugly or pretty. She treats me like the sister she never had." Amid her often-frantic home life, Luciano manages to keep up her spirits, as well as those of her husband. "The other day he said to me, 'I wish I could be more romantic, but I'm just too tired,' " she recalls. "1 said, 'You've given me a lot of good memories already, that's good enough. When we're old and our kids are gone, you can be romantic again.' " And who would call a husband who buys his wife a horse unromantic? When asked why, he says, "We met for the first time on horseback, that was one reason. Also, I have the motorcycle as my hobby, and she didn't have anything. So I figured she needed something. And we both have a love for horses." Luciano got the horse, named Luke, this past June. "He's so gentle. When the other horses attack him, he never fights back. He's really trusting. I rub his ears and his mouth, and he gives kisses and hugs," she says. As a child Luciano thought she was going to marry three times and wear three different colors--white, red and black. "My parents were never secretive about anything," she says. "I knew my father had been married before. In fact, my mother named me after his ex-wife. My mom had been married three times, so I figured I wanted to be married three times. I wanted to be just like my parents," she admits. Although Luciano did indeed wear white for her first wedding, she opted for black the second time. "I always feel very strong and sexy and confident in black," she contends. "When I walked down the aisle the second time, I didn't want my husband to think, 'Oh, how virginal and sweet.' I wanted him to say, 'Oh, yeah, baby.' Nothing about us was traditional, yet our relationship is very traditional. It's very much based in love and very much based in friendship. This is the best time in my life. Not that I don't want more from my career, but it doesn't matter like it used to. That's alI had before, now I have a family and I have a husband. I have all the things I always wanted before I wanted to be an actress, so I'm very satisfied." # |
