By admin 
Introduction
There is a peculiar cruelty in celebrity apologies. The star confesses their sins under the bright lights of a television studio, the audience applauds their vulnerability, and the world moves on. But what about the person sitting at home, watching their own heartbreak turned into a PR soundbite?
For nearly six decades, Barry Manilow has lived with the ghost of Susan Deixler.
The narrative has always been one of wistful regret. In countless interviews, Manilow has fallen on his sword. He has called himself “immature,” described his decision to leave as “selfish,” and painted Susan as a saint who did absolutely nothing wrong. He has publicly absolved her of any blame, taking the full weight of the failed marriage on his own sequined shoulders. To the public, this looks like redemption. It looks like closure.
But dig deeper, and you find a much colder reality.
The scandal isn’t that Barry left; it’s that for the vast majority of the last half-century, the communication has been entirely one-sided—and entirely public. While Manilow was telling People magazine how wonderful Susan was, they were effectively strangers. There was no secret reunion, no tearful coffee shop meeting, no closure behind closed doors. The “apology” was broadcast to millions, yet reports suggest that the direct line to Susan remained silent for decades.
Susan Deixler, for her part, maintained a dignified, crushing silence. She didn’t sell a “tell-all” book. She didn’t go on talk shows to bash the ex-husband who traded her for a piano. She quietly rebuilt her life, remarried, and raised a family, all while her first husband became a global icon who occasionally used their failed romance as a sentimental anecdote in his biography.
This dynamic raises a provocative question about the nature of fame: Did Barry Manilow apologize to Susan to heal her pain, or did he do it to heal his own public image? When you speak to the camera instead of the person, who are you really talking to? The tragedy here is that the “perfect wife” became a footnote in a superstar’s legend, receiving a public eulogy for a marriage she lived through privately. The apology may have been late, but for the woman who watched him walk away in 1965, it might also have been hollow.