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Lucinda Franks Authors Book About Love Affair With Former Manhattan DA Morgenthau

NEW YORK (CBSNewYork) -- It was a marriage that shouldn't have been -- couldn't have been -- writes Lucinda Franks of her nearly 40-year-long marriage to former Manhattan District Attorney Robert Morgenthau.

She was a reporter and hippy anti-war protester who had chained herself to the White House fence. He was a symbol of the establishment, 30 years her senior and a widower with five children.

Franks has written a book about their love affair, titled "Timeless: Love, Morgenthau and Me."

Lucinda Franks Authors Book About Love Affair With Former Manhattan DA Morgenthau

"He was an old man of 53, I think, and he was a source for me at The New York Times," Franks told WCBS 880's Irene Cornell. "I never in a million years in my dreams thought I would marry a man old enough to be my father."

Morgenthau was a source for Franks, she thought, until he invited her to a party for Jimmy Carter at the home of historian Arthur Schlesinger.

"And I was a hippy, anti-war person," Franks said. "It was back in the '70s, and so I got on my best silk peasant blouse, my bell-bottoms and a nice pair of platform shoes. I thought it looked very spiffy."

All the high-society dames, however, thought she looked homeless. But Morgenthau just kept smiling -- and not at the likes of Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis, but at her.

And that was the beginning of what Franks describes as their "timeless love."

For more information on the book, visit LucindaFranks.com.

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