Robert and Barbara Rubinstein Celebrate 70 Years of Marriage and a Life of Love, Activism, and Legacy

“To my best girl — let’s always keep it that way,” Robert Rubinstein signed in Barbara Nahin’s yearbook 75 years ago. 

Robert, 93, and Barbara, 94, celebrated their 70th wedding anniversary on July 17. 

They met as students in the late 1940s at the Bronx High School of Science. 

“It was an all-boys school,” Robert said. “The year I got there, they made it co-ed — and she was in the first class.” 

Barbara’s parents passed away when she was a teenager, and she moved to New York to be with her aunt and uncle. After a year in high school, she and Robert became friends through shared classes.  From the start, the couple complemented each other’s differences. 

“He needed help with geometry, I needed help with algebra. He was a very good social studies student. I was a failure at social studies,” Barbara said. 

In their technical drawing class, she did Robert’s assignments for him. 

“I couldn’t draw a straight line,” he said. 

Once the two discovered they shared a birthday, they decided to celebrate with friends. Barbara, who was 17 at the time, was worried Robert, 16, would lose interest once he knew she was a year older. 

“Now he’s married to an old lady,” Barbara joked. 

On one of their first dates, Robert took Barbara to see The Naked City, a detective film. A live show starring comedy duo Dean Martin and Jerry Lewis followed the movie.

They’d go on to witness more early performances from entertainers on the brink of stardom. After the high school prom, Robert and Barbara went out to a nightclub in Manhattan, where they saw the debut of singer Pearl Bailey. 

The couple became the Rubinsteins in their 20s.

Before their wedding, though, the couple spent two years apart while Robert served in the Korean War. He knew he would marry Barbara when he returned and even had his family give her a ring to wear until then.

Despite the distance, the two stayed in touch constantly. “I wrote her a letter almost every day,” Robert said. 

While Robert was overseas, Barbara obtained a graduate degree in clinical psychology from the City College of New York. 

As a student, she was an assistant to Kenneth Clark, a professor and activist during the Civil Rights Movement. Clark, alongside his wife, contributed to the Brown v. Board of Education ruling, which determined racial segregation in public schools was unconstitutional. 

“I had to cover many of his classes, because he spent a lot of time in Washington, DC, arguing with the Supreme Court,” Barbara said. 

After the ruling, Clark offered Barbara a job as his assistant at the Northside Center for Child Development in Harlem — a clinic he and his wife founded. 

Barbara and Robert were set to marry soon after Robert returned from the war. However, his ship home was delayed, and the wedding had to be postponed. 

“He called me up on some cable line, I could barely understand him,” Barbara said. Robert explained the troopship had been used to carry prisoners of war, and the military wanted to disinfect it before transporting American soldiers. 

A few months later, Robert and Barbara held their wedding at an apartment. The home belonged to Barbara’s aunt and uncle — a Manhattan penthouse overlooking Central Park. 

They would go on to have three children — Lisa, Kenneth and Adam. 

When Lisa was born, Robert was a law school student at New York University. “I was cradling [her] and listening to the Supremes,” he joked. 

The couple moved from Manhattan to Riverdale while Barbara was pregnant with Kenneth in 1959. 

“We lived in the noisiest apartment in the world [in Manhattan], it was next to a cafeteria … every order rebounded against the wall,” Robert said. At this time, 60 years ago, the couple paid $70 in rent for a one-bedroom on 6th Avenue and 57th Street. 

After living in a few apartments in the Riverdale neighborhood, Robert and Barbara designed the house they still live in today. 

Across 60 years in the neighborhood, Robert has been a part of organizations like Kiwanis Club of Riverdale, Riverdale Senior Services, and contributed to establishing the Benjamin Franklin Reform Democratic Club. 

Robert is the honorary vice president of Kiwanis, a local branch of an international organization which provides support and development services to children.

As an attorney for the city’s Housing Preservation and Development agency, he helped develop buildings — including homes under the Mitchell Lama Housing Program — in areas like Battery Park and Roosevelt Island. He also provided legal assistance to those denied housing in Riverdale because of race. 

Robert said in the early 1960s, Riverdale real estate agents were directed not to hire minorities. A Black family applied to Skyview, on 5700 Arlington Avenue, and was denied based on agents’ claims they couldn’t afford the apartment. 

The husband, Roy Jackson, was a cameraman for CBS, and his wife, Gloria, was a tenured college professor. Robert organized a protest outside the apartment building until the family was allowed in.  

“Half the people in the community were marching,” Barbara said. 

In another instance, a Black jazz artist was looking to rent an apartment in Riverdale and was told it was unavailable. 

“I called back that Monday, and I asked for the same apartment,” Robert said. “The person said, ‘You can have it for three months’ concession.” The artist was given the place soon after. 

Robert and Barbara have been by each other’s side throughout their accomplishments. 

When asked what the couple loves most about each other, the answers were the same: they put up with one another. 

“If you have a disagreement, don’t go off and break up over one thing. It’s deeper than that,” Robert said as advice to young couples. “People try to take their own space, but you have to work it out together.”