He was a country boy who grew up on a wheat farm, she a city girl who played on her high school tennis team.
The lives of Nathan Hecht and Harriet Miers began to inter-twine in the early 1970s, shortly after they finished law school at Southern Methodist University in Dallas.
Soon, they were rising stars at the same law firm, and their lives seemed to converge in every way. They were earnest, ambitious and increasingly affectionate with one another. Friends thought they would get married.
Instead, for 30 years, Hecht and Miers–President Bush’s Supreme Court nominee–have nurtured a kinship that has entranced and confounded their closest friends. They are traditional conservatives content in a modern, non-traditional relationship, one that leaves plenty of time for their true love, their work, to take center stage.
Romantic at times, the relationship has played an important role in their ascendance to power–she as White House counsel, he to the Texas Supreme Court, where he has served as a justice for 15 years.
“I think they thought seriously about getting married,” said Dallas commercial litigation attorney Brady Sparks, a friend of both of them. “They both decided that it just wasn’t in the cards for the agenda they both wanted, and that was to do about three lifetimes worth of work in one lifetime.”
Ron Key, their pastor, said God called him to preach, not to play matchmaker. He said theirs is the only relationship that has ever tempted him to intervene.
“It’s been great to watch–and a little puzzling sometimes,” Key said. “Their relationship has been such a special one. Sometimes I think they wanted to protect how special it was by not getting married.”
While Miers, 60, makes the rounds of senators in Washington, Hecht, 55, has become her de facto spokesman.
Bush’s supporters have encouraged him to talk about Miers, largely in an effort to assuage conservatives unconvinced that she is a stalwart ally.
Only when asked about their personal relationship does the Hecht begin to demur.
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“We are good, close friends,” he said Friday. “And we have been for all these years. … We are not dating. We are not seeing each other romantically. Not currently.”
Miers and Hecht became friends in 1975 after she took him out to dinner while he was interviewing for a job with a Dallas law firm, Locke, Purnell, Boren, Laney & Neely.
As they got to know each other, “they were very friendly–affectionate, close to each other,” Sparks said.
Both have dated other people over the years.
Hecht has been linked to Priscilla Owen, the controversial federal appellate judge who recently served on the Texas Supreme Court with him.
Miers was engaged briefly in the 1970s to Jim Martin, a law school classmate and, today, a Dallas attorney. They dated for two years.
Then one night, they met for a late meal at a Denny’s and broke it off.
“Our time wasn’t our own,” Martin said. “She’s a very warm and caring person and would make someone a wonderful wife. It’s just that she’s extremely focused on her career.”