by Candida Morvillo
“He infected me with his courage.” “She’s my ex’s best friend.” “I was 47, he was 61, both with children and an existence behind them.” “I understood something extraordinary: that life has more imagination than we do”
Marco Tardelli and Myrta Merlino answer closely huddled neighbors. The ex-soccer player, famous for his victory cry at the 82nd World Cup, and the presenter of Aria che tira di La7 have been a couple for six years. An odd couple on paper, a great love in practice. He: «They are not for couple interviews. We look like Al Bano and Romina, then people can’t stand us.” Her: “You broke up, I want to die with you”.
What makes two people who fall in love as adults say, “I want to die with you”?
Marco: «Hope. You know the drama of looking for someone else? I’m fine with Myrta, we share everything, even if it annoys me because she’s always on the phone. But she is intelligent, she is beautiful: it is better to keep her ».
Myrta: “I had two husbands, I had children with the first and the second, but I had never experienced the feeling of saying “I found my home, I don’t want anything else”. I’m restless, intolerant, but I feel at home with Marco. While it’s not that he doesn’t have his stiffness: he’s very black or white, I struggle to keep track of him all the time. But I too am full of mistakes ».
Marco: «What a nice interview in which I don’t speak. The concept is that I’m with her because she’s the only one speaking.”
Marco, you said that after the first appointment he moved from Milan to Rome in 48 hours just to get closer to Myrta: what was the trigger?
“I really wanted to be with her. I said to her and she: no, forget it, maybe come from time to time. I answered: I’m coming, you do what you want».
Myrta: «It was a gesture of great courage. I was 47, he was 61, we were structured people, with a life behind us, with houses, children, habits… It was difficult to suddenly dismantle everything and he did it. I, on the other hand, had a thousand fears, but courage is contagious.”
how old were the kids
«Twins almost twenty, Caterina 15, the first year was difficult for both me and Marco. He came to live in a small house. The other day we were talking and I told him: I also arrived in Rome and I took an ugly house on the ground floor and left a very beautiful house in Naples, but I was young, I was separated, I had two little twins , I wanted in Rai work, this house horrified me but I had to save my life ».
Marco: “And I answered: I also had to save my life”.
Myrta: «Now that my boys are in Milan and Caterina in London, we will finally live together. Maybe we found the right home.”
Once Geppi Cucciari greeted Myrta on TV by presenting her as a woman who had found peace after 40 years of hell. Was he just kidding?
“He met me at an unfortunate time. However, before Marco I was convinced that I was doing so well. I said to myself: I have children, friends, a job that I love, I don’t feel alone. I had dreamed of love for fairy tales, but I hadn’t found it: a love that never tires, is complicated, with a sense of perpetual competition, with my work always seen as an obstacle. So I no longer searched for this love. Then, with Marco, I understood something extraordinary: that life has more imagination than we do ».
Marco: “This sentence about life would be mine”.
Myrta: «True, but thanks to you I got it. And you must acknowledge that I have built a lot and been very constructive ».
What do you mean by “very constructive”?
“I’ve tried to live a lot together, to bring friends and affection into community. He is very reserved, he seems closed. I also immediately introduced it to Liliana Segre, I met her for an interview and it’s now a piece of my life, I also recorded the podcast Tienimi la mano in three episodes with her. I took Marco to breakfast with the two of us and she said, Myrta, don’t miss out. I asked why and she: I know how to recognize a look of love and it is so strong and transparent that I have rarely seen it in my life. Marco then asked, shrewdly, what my look was like ».
Marco: «The senator answered: She has to work on it. But we were just at the beginning of our relationship.”
Myrta: «Segre says that she was saved from love by her husband Alfredo, whom she met at the age of 18 shortly before the concentration camps. He says that love is the base and the rest is built on it.
You two were friends for fifteen years, how come you suddenly saw each other through different eyes?
Marco: “It didn’t happen suddenly for me: she was a friend of my ex-partner Stella Pende and I liked her immediately.”
Myrta: “He was already separated while I was married and he was very respectful and didn’t reach out until I was single again.”
Marco: «Me respectful? If I’m a traitor ».
Myrta: «I know. Serial. But with me you were very respectful ».
Marco, is he a traitor or was he a traitor?
“Now I am no more, I am old.”
Myrta: «He also became famous for flirting with Moana Pozzi. It’s not that I’m not jealous, but I’m super sure about him because I’m like myself: I wouldn’t want to spend a night with anyone else and I have a feeling he feels the same way.”
Marco: «Darling, you explain it fantastically. The difference between us is that I’m very jealous. Everything bothers me. ‘
Myrta: “When I say ‘love’ to a friend on the phone, he jumps up: How does it make me think of saying love?”.
How do people with such different life stories cope?
Myrta: «I always thought I needed very complex people, but I love Marco’s basic simplicity, his inner cleanliness, his lack of nuances, just clear values. If he thinks something is wrong, there is no way he can do it, even if it suits him. And this rigidity is a breath of fresh air for me in a world of double people ».
Marco: «Don’t speak badly of others».
Myrta: «But I live in the middle of politics, on television. See how it is? He hasn’t lost any of the basic rules he learned from his father or from Enzo Bearzot.”
Myrta: «In Pantelleria, where Marco has a dammuso that is our sanctuary. But if the kids are fine and we can make decisions without disturbing anyone.”
Are you always as close as you are now?
Marco: «I’m someone who, if he feels comfortable with someone, has to touch him. I loved my father and touched his hand while watching TV. The way I am”.
Myrta: “We have a friend who calls us “the cell,” she says: I can no longer imagine Myrta without Marco and Marco without Myrta. What happened to both of us is that we feel like cells. What a miracle for two individualists like us. Marco, do you agree with this ending? ».
Marco: “Perfect: I’m with you so that you can verbalize well”.
October 12, 2022 (Change October 12, 2022 | 07:44)
© REPRODUCTION RESERVED