By admin 
INTRODUCTION
Long before the global residencies and the platinum records, the narrative of Barry Manilow began in the modest, salt-of-the-earth neighborhood of Williamsburg, Brooklyn. It was here, amidst the rhythmic clatter of the subway and the aspiring dreams of a Jewish youth, that a fourteen-year-old Barry met Susan Deixler. To the “Fanilows” of 2026, Susan represents a spectral presence—the “perfect wife” who occupied the pre-fame chapters of a man destined for the stratosphere. As Manilow navigates the final, introspective dates of “The Last Sunrise” tour, this innocent high school romance has resurfaced not as a source of regret, but as the foundational emotional blueprint for the meticulously crafted longing that defines his six-decade career.
THE DETAILED STORY
The relationship between Barry and Susan was a paradigm of mid-century innocence, a slow-burning devotion that transitioned from high school hallways to the judge’s chambers at City Hall in 1964. At twenty-one, Manilow was a musician in the most embryonic sense, a gifted pianist with a “voluptuous” bride whose smile, he would later write in his autobiography Sweet Life, “lit up the room.” They settled into a small apartment in Greenwich Village, a geography that should have been the setting for a lifetime of domestic stability. However, the nuance of their union was shadowed by an inevitable conflict: the “wondrous musical adventure” that Manilow felt vibrating just beyond his reach.
The tragedy of this first love was not a lack of affection, but a mismatch of temporalities. While Susan was ready to build a home, Barry was “sowing his wild oats” in the recording studios and off-Broadway pits of a burgeoning New York scene. By 1966, the marriage was annulled, a casualty of his relentless pursuit of a legacy that had not yet materialized. He has since been candid that his sexuality was not the primary engine of their dissolution at that time; rather, it was the sheer gravity of his ambition. He simply could not be the “proper husband” while his soul was tethered to a keyboard in a nightclub. This period of “ancient history,” as Susan Deixler called it in a rare 2015 interview, became the silent fuel for the emotional authenticity of tracks like “Mandy” and “Even Now.”
In 2026, as Manilow stands on the precipice of his final retirement from the road, the story of Susan serves as a poignant reminder of the cost of greatness. The “innocent” love of his Brooklyn youth was the price he paid for the ability to make the “whole world sing.” While he eventually found lasting happiness with Garry Kief, the memory of that 1964 wedding remains an authoritative testament to the human heart’s capacity for both deep devotion and necessary departure. It is a sophisticated, bittersweet irony: the very loneliness he sought to escape through Susan became the very tool he used to build an empire of song.