The Spinster Sisters (2 page)

Ruth earns her unconventional, but by no means negligible, salary by serving as a self-proclaimed “curator of Chicago.” She can tell you the place to get the best Chicago-style hot dogs and the finest five-star meals. She knows the urban legends and the proven history and is hired by wealthy visitors to guide them around the city, helping them explore the less touristy attractions and serving as a sort of private concierge. Her services are entirely based on word of mouth and apparently have no set rate. According to Jodi, “Oh, whatever you feel appropriate . . .” is her only acknowledgment that she is supposed to be paid. And apparently this tactic works very well, with the flustered clients desperate to not appear cheap by offering too little. She takes the month of July off every year to travel, noting that her type of clientele tend to be at their own beach houses and cabin getaways that month anyway, and admitting to not completely adoring the weekly festivals that Chicago celebrates in the summer.

Shirley serves as a cookbook recipe tester for several publishing houses, who send her galleys of new cookbooks and have her try out the recipes to see if they are suitable for a home kitchen. She is quoted as saying, “There was much less joy in the
Joy of Cooking
before I fixed it.” The elder pair of Spingold sisters hold a monthly salon of local artists, writers, intellectuals, and a smattering of paying guests, who gather to eat and talk and participate in everything from traditional Native American drum circles to lessons in self-defense, and one misbegotten snake charming experiment. (About that incident, all that the elder and younger Spingolds will say is that both an ambulance and Animal Rescue had to be called in but that neither humans nor reptiles were seriously injured.)

Sitting in the large office Jodi and Jill share in the West Loop area of Chicago, I ask them about their upbringing. Aunt Ruth and Aunt Shirley are, according to the girls, the perfect pair of surrogates.

“Aunt Ruth has always been full of adventures and wild ideas and grand plans,” Jodi reminisces. “And Aunt Shirley is calmer, more logical, with excellent organization skills and a mean hand in the kitchen. Aunt Shirley was like having a stay-at-home mom—she was always there when we got home from school—and Aunt Ruth breezed in and out a little more haphazardly.” Apparently Ruth took them to strange, exotic restaurants, introducing them to the cuisines of Vietnam and Ecuador, and Shirley taught the girls how to make delicious and nutritious meals at home and trained them in the recipes of Bubbe Spingold, their great-grandmother. Ruth planned outings to tea ceremonies at the Midwest Buddhist Temple, and Shirley took them to high tea at the Drake Hotel.

“It was like being raised by Auntie Mame and Mrs. Piggle Wiggle!” Jill says. “But it was also a place of security and great love. They were both amazing about keeping our parents alive for us; we celebrated their birthdays and kept loads of photos around, and they would tell us as many stories as they could remember. Aunt Shirley even made each of us a small quilt with scraps from their clothes.”

“And they showed us how to rely on each other and ourselves,” Jodi offers.

“True.” Jill nods in agreement. “They made it very clear that they liked their independence and were self-reliant, but they also allowed themselves to depend on each other. Clearly, we took that lesson to heart.”

I ask about their aunts’ attitudes about relationships, wondering if it might have influenced their own ideas regarding matrimony.

“Aunt Shirley was engaged to be married when she was in her early twenties,” Jodi says, twirling a piece of hair around her forefinger. “But she called it off because she didn’t feel deeply in love with him. I think she dated here and there, but never anyone that seriously.”

“And Aunt Ruth is a total player!” Jill jumps in. “She has always had a small stable of regular beaus and seems to manage her time with each of them with Swiss precision.”

“But they were always very conscious of being honest with us about their opinions while encouraging us to have our own. And they have always been very supportive of our relationships,” Jodi says, presumably to dispel the myth that the aunts might have encouraged the girls to stay single.

“That’s very true.” Jill nods emphatically. “It didn’t matter if it was about politics or personal choice; they always told us to follow the path that made the most sense for us.”

It is clear from the way these women interact that the bond between them is extraordinary. The energy that comes from them is unified and clear, and while one starts to get the idea that Jodi is more of a creative, big-picture idea gal and Jill a savvy and organized businesswoman, without a doubt, this is a partnership of loving equals.

Growing up, to hear them tell it, they were just as devoted. Jodi was offered a double promotion from the fourth grade to sixth, which she declined, telling Ruth and Shirley that she didn’t want to be more than two grades ahead of Jill. Jill dropped out of the high school yearbook committee when Jodi was passed over for editor. More than sisters, best friends, and helpmates, the girls stayed together through thick and thin. Jodi chose the University of Chicago so that she could be close to home for college, and Jill joined her there two years later, passing up a scholarship to the University of Pennsylvania.

Their entrepreneurial spirit became apparent when they were still in college. Surprised at the girls in her classes, who all seemed bound and determined to find one steady boyfriend, Jodi started writing a weekly anonymous column called “The Spin” for the
Maroon
, the campus paper, a fun series of essays on the joys of dating lots of different people, including, shockingly, university staff, assistant professors, and visiting dignitaries. Jill, meanwhile, studying marketing, recognized a potential business opportunity among the young women of the campus and began selling notepads, T-shirts, and other paraphernalia with tongue-in-cheek “girl power/boys are stupid” phrases. Jodi shocked everyone, including herself, when she fell for the quiet guy that computer services sent to fix her system when it crashed in the beginning of her senior year. They moved in together right after her graduation and were married within the year.

“Jill never really liked Brant much,” Jodi says. “But she supported me in all things, even if that included suffering an irritating brother-in-law.”

“I wanted her to be happy, and while Brant was making her happy, I had to support that.” Jill shrugs.

“And when he stopped making me happy, she supported me in my decision to divorce,” Jodi admits.

Five years ago, the spunky sisters were in very different places in their lives. Jill was tackling the world of marketing from the bottom, leading focus groups for a research firm. Jodi was cobbling together a living from freelance writing for local Chicago print media and teaching journalism at Columbia College. Jodi’s marriage to her college sweetheart had crumbled, and she found herself suddenly single before her thirtieth birthday.

“It was frightening,” Jodi says. She is a short, curvaceous woman with wild brown curls and piercing blue eyes, and she is simple and frank in her delivery. “I’d never expected to be back out in the dating world. But I found that while I had no regrets about my marriage, I significantly regretted the feeling that I had lost my twenties focused so exclusively on a relationship. I felt perhaps I would have made smarter choices had I been more independent.”

Jill is a taller, slimmer version of her older sister, with hair more wavy than curly, and eyes a shade closer to green than blue, but with the same porcelain skin and the same wide smile. There is an identical cadence to their speech, Jill’s voice a hair deeper in tone. “We went to a family friend’s wedding, the bride and groom both twenty-five. Jodi looks at me during the reception and says that she feels like grabbing them and telling them not to do it, to live twenty-five first.”

Jodi interrupts her sister. “So Jill asks me what I meant by that, and I started this mini rant about what I would have done differently. By the time the reception was over, we had outlined the idea for a book.”

Their first literary collaboration,
Living Twenty-five
, was written in the evenings and on weekends and celebrated being young and adventurous and playing the field; encouraged devotion to one’s career but not one man; and suggested that women put matrimony on the back burner. They gave it to their aunts for content advice (Ruth) and editing (Shirley). When the elder Spingolds gave their final approval, Jodi and Jill put together a proposal and sent it to a publishing magnate who had spent a week in Chicago under Ruth’s tutelage some twenty years earlier and had stayed in touch ever since. The publisher jumped on the book, and the sisters embarked on their new adventure.

The real whirlwind began when they were invited, shortly after the publication, to appear as guest speakers for a local Jewish twenty-something charity event. One of the attendees was a well-connected socialite visiting from New York, who upon returning to the East Coast touted the sisters as her own little discovery to all of her wealthy and powerful friends. Within weeks there were invitations to appear at similar events in New York, Boston, and D.C., and the word of mouth began to take hold.

Their easy banter and complementary public speaking styles made them a hot ticket on the lecture circuit and landed them the radio show with a small Internet station. A call to fill in last minute for an AWOL celebrity on the Oprah show did what it does for any book—sent it rocketing up the bestseller charts and selling out at bookstores. The business grew exponentially over the next two years, with the second book debuting at number seven on the
New York Times
bestseller list. “No new Harry Potter book that week,” Jodi makes a point of noting. The show got picked up by satellite radio, Jill’s merchandising fetish returned with a lucrative vengeance, and Spinster Inc. was quickly an industry to reckon with.

The second book,
The Thirty Commandments
, became a bible to single women in their thirties. The company name is both alliterative (Spingold/Spinster) and a way of reclaiming the moniker and taking the negative connotation out of it. Jodi and Jill are having the time of their lives. “Chicago is a great playground for two successful women in the prime of life,” Jodi says with a wink. And things are only looking up. There is some discussion of a possible television show, and the third book,
Facing Down Forty
(targeted at women in their mid to late thirties and encouraging them to create a list of forty things they want to do before turning forty, and then finding ways to do them), is coming together smoothly and will be out in time for the summer. Both sisters were listed in
Chicago
magazine’s annual Most Eligible issue last summer but are closemouthed about their romantic lives.

“You’ll just have to see if we’re in there again next summer!” Jill says with a twinkle in her eye.

This charmed life for charming women doesn’t come without a price. Conservative family values organizations claim that the Spinster Inc. message is antimarriage and pro-promiscuity and undermines the importance of the stay-at-home mother as a representation of all that is right with the American family. For every message of thanks received from the Spinster website, there is at least one calling their work shameful, and at least a few times per week, one that is actually threatening. “We have appropriate security measures in place.” Jodi shrugs off the hate-mail issue. “We believe in our message, a part of which is that every woman should make up her own mind and be her own person. We aren’t antimarriage; we are simply against women feeling as if they are a failure or less than a woman if they choose
not
to marry. We aren’t against women being stay-at-home mothers, as long as it is their choice and desire to pursue it, and not because they feel it is expected of them. Anytime you attempt to empower someone, there will be someone who would prefer them submissive. And in this country, the right to publicly disagree with an opinion is sacred. We respect these organizations’ right to voice their message and wish they were more respectful of our right to voice ours.”

Detractors or no, the business continues to be lucrative and offers a nice lifestyle for all four Spingold women. They were able to purchase a gorgeous three-flat up the block from the house they grew up in and, after an extensive renovation, moved everyone into the new digs: Jodi on the top floor, Jill on the second floor, and the aunts, now in their early seventies, on the first floor. It is a house full of independent women, depending on each other.

I accept a coveted invite to meet the aunts at the Palmer Square residence and find myself immediately drawn to these very different women.

“We couldn’t be prouder of them,” says Ruth, a tall, slim, elegant woman with short, spiky red hair and strands of chunky beads over a long, black dress. “We know their parents are watching over them.”

“Goodness, yes,” pipes in Shirley, a good six inches shorter than her sister, with a grandmotherly air and silver hair in a neat chignon. “They work harder than you can imagine, sometimes twelve, fourteen hours a day. Frankly, I don’t know how they do it.”

We don’t know how they do it either, but their fans are sure glad they do.

“They give you permission to put yourself and your need for personal development ahead of creating your identity in relation to other people, especially romantic partners,” says Paige Andrews, who started as a shared executive assistant for both sisters and has moved up within the organization and now serves as the director of operations for the company. Paige approached the sisters after hearing them speak shortly after the first book was released, and offered her services. The sisters took a chance on the young woman, who was just a year out of college. Now twenty-eight and in a position usually reserved for people with both graduate-level educations and years of practical experience, the pretty redhead is humble about her meteoric rise.