Member-only story
Is 49 Too Old to Change Your Last Name?
I mocked late-marriers for taking their husbands' name — then I went and did it.
When my husband proposed to me, I was 49 and never married. He was 57 and a widower. While the content of our lives would fuse, mingle and blend, one thing would remain the same: my name.
I always thought there was something a bit mutton-dressed-up-as-lamb about a middle-aged woman who takes her husband’s name — like wearing a mini-skirt and pigtails at 50.
On more occasions than I care to admit, I was the wedding guest who rolled her eyes when the 40-year-old bride was presented with her husband’s last name. I’d knock my elbow into the arm of my best single girlfriend and whisper, “Isn’t it a bit late for that?”
When I informed Steve, my fiancé, of my plans to remain Tatyana Mishel he shrugged, “I figured.” Case closed.
A month before the wedding, in early July, Steve and I sat drinking coffee in the sun. Without looking up from his iPad my fiancé asked:
“When are you going to change your work email to Tatyana Sussex?”
At first, I was startled; then laughed it off. This was the man who also joked, “When are you going to ask the kids to call you Mom?” His kids were 28 and 30; his daughter was…
