We’re the Couple That Tina Turner Encounters at Minute 2:43 of Her “What’s Love Got to Do With It” Video, and This is Our Story

Forty years ago this month, the great Tina Turner’s “What’s Love Got To Do With It?” was the number one song in the United States.

If I tend to look dazed, I’ve read it someplace that it’s been forty years since that song hit number one. Four decades! Hard to believe. We’re Sheryl and Roger. We lived in a one-bedroom apartment on 17th Street. Our apartment was great. We had several Nagel prints and a waterbed—because, of course, we did. We lived above a pizza place that made an excellent thin-crust pie but burned its garlic knots with alarming frequency. The smoke from those charred knots was a part of our daily life, seeping through the floorboards and making everything smell like burnt garlic knots. The smoke inhalation often made my pulse react. Which is why we often had to go outside to quarrel. I realize now those garlic knots are a metaphor for our relationship. The shiny, brushed egg-white sheen on the surface—but perpetually charred underneath.

Quarrelus Tinaruptus

When Tina Turner bumped into us while filming her video, we were in a heated sidewalk debate about whether Ronald Reagan’s imminent re-election was a sign of America’s triumph or its impending doom. I was railing against Reaganomics and warning Roger that trickle-down economics was just a fancy way of giving rich people bigger pools. Roger claimed Reagan’s restoration of national pride and perpetual optimism was making America, to wit, Wall Street, flourish. Roger dismissed my concerns about growing inequality.

Tina, probably sensing that our argument was escalating in a way that only ’80s arguments could, stopped. She gave us this knowing look, the kind only a woman who has lived some things can give. She clasped our hands together as if to say, Figure this out, you two. Then, almost immediately, she seemed to reconsider and just… unclasped them. After she walked away, we stood there for a beat. “What the hell just happened?” Roger said, still holding my hand like one might hold a meteorite. It felt like we had just received divine Tina-vention.

Our Post-Tina Era

You would think that having Tina Turner personally enmeshed in our relationship would have been a lighthouse guiding our true romantic compass. But no, while we were both stubborn, we seemed to have opposing viewpoints on everything. But as Tina sang, “That it’s only the thrill of boy meeting girl, opposites attract. It’s physical. Only logical.” Roger and I spent the next few years doing the same dance—quarreling, making up, quarreling again. At least once a week, we ended up in a shouting match on the sidewalk, asking ourselves what love had to do with it.

Then, in typical Roger fashion, he landed a job at Lehman Brothers. Why they hired him remains a mystery, but his keytar days had given him just enough delusional confidence to dazzle some sleep-deprived hiring manager. It was peak ’80s: when ambition outweighed qualifications and watching Wall Street on VHS was enough. Despite not fully understanding what derivatives were, he convinced everyone that he was the next financial genius. One day, it all caught up to him, and he was let go. So Roger got a job at the downstairs pizza shop just as I was starting my own endeavor.

I was an aerobics instructor and had been thinking about my financial protection. It scared me to feel that way, but I enrolled in NYU Law School anyway. Inspired by the work of Professor Geoffrey Miller, I soon began research on systemic risk in banking. I explored how interconnected financial institutions amplify risks, potentially leading to widespread economic instability and financial crises. While I was identifying vulnerabilities and proposing risk mitigation strategies for maintaining economic stability, Roger was slinging slices and quickly became a revered pizza artist. It’s money. It’s pizza. You must try to ignore that it means more than that

Where We Are Now

The 1990s brought a whole new set of challenges. Grunge arrived, and we had more than a modicum of difficulty adapting to a world of subtlety and irony. We made it through Y2K mostly unscathed, although Roger did hoard an alarming amount of canned marinara.

Fast-forward to today. We’re still together, somehow. We’ve mellowed out, mostly. In the years since we encountered Ms. Turner on that sidewalk, we’ve found ourselves haunted—and oddly inspired—by the lyrics of “What’s Love Got to Do with It,” especially the line, “Who needs a heart when a heart can be broken?” This became our mantra, pushing us to take risks and embrace bold choices with nary a concern for our hearts.

I continue practicing law and am still convinced love alone won’t make you happy. At the same time, Roger realized his dreams were in the pizza trade and leaned into the idea that love and passion sometimes dwell outside traditional boundaries. We realized love was as much about daring as devotion. But whatever the reason, you do it for me.

Also, turns out I was right about Reaganomics fostering inequality—we’re wealthy!

Every once in a while, someone will bring up that moment in the Tina Turner video. “Was that you guys?” they ask. And we just smile and nod. Because in the end, what’s love got to do with it? Everything—and nothing. And maybe that’s the point.