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When people started dying from lethal anthrax spores sent through the mail in 2001, infectious disease expert Jeannette Guarner, MD, was called to Florida and Connecticut to analyze the bodies. She and her pathology team investigated how the bacteria had entered the victims and examined tissue samples from across the country to discern the scale of the attacks.
After conducting autopsies and identifying that inhalation anthrax had caused the deaths, Dr. Guarner rushed home to Atlanta just in time for Thanksgiving. Exhausted, the beloved family chef still managed to cook the big turkey that holiday, but she enlisted help with dessert.
“She returned home on Thanksgiving at like three in the morning,” recalls Carlos del Rio, MD. “She said to me, ‘In order for us to have Thanksgiving, you have to be in charge of the pies.’ When I told my daughter, she said, ‘This is going to be a disaster! If mom’s not cooking, this is not going to be good.’”
“It didn’t turn out that bad,” Dr. Guarner laughs. “There was dessert.”
As two of the top infectious disease experts in the country, Dr. Guarner and Dr. del Rio are no strangers to juggling their personal lives around disease outbreaks, last-minute travel, and pressing research.
Former director of the clinical laboratory at Mexico’s National Cancer Institute, Dr. Guarner worked for the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention for 10 years, where she played an integral part in the discovery of SARS. She and her team identified that a coronavirus was in cultures taken from a health care worker who died after working in Asia and determined through molecular testing that the virus was different from any other coronaviruses at the time.
Dr. Guarner went on to search for the novel virus in tissue samples and determine that it was SARS that had caused the damage. She is now a professor in the department of pathology and laboratory medicine at Emory University, Atlanta, medical director of the clinical laboratory at Emory University Hospital Midtown, and vice chair for faculty affairs.
Dr. Del Rio, who served as director of the National AIDS Council of Mexico, is a distinguished professor of medicine in Emory University’s division of infectious diseases and a professor of global health and epidemiology in the Rollins School of Public Health at Emory University. He is also co-director of the Emory Center for AIDS Research and co-principal investigator of the Emory-CDC HIV Clinical Trials Unit and the Emory Vaccine and Treatment Evaluation Unit.
Dr. Del Rio’s work in HIV prevention and care has made great strides, including developing the concept for the HIV Care Continuum, a public health model that outlines the stages that HIV patients go through, from diagnosis to achieving viral suppression. Dr. Del Rio, who is foreign secretary of the National Academy of Medicine, has also worked on emerging infections such as pandemic influenza and was a member of the WHO Influenza A (H1N1) Clinical Advisory Group and of the CDC Influenza A Task Force during the 2009 pandemic.
Dr. Del Rio and Dr. Guarner met during medical school in Mexico City. At first, the two carpooled to classes, but when Dr. Guarner fell ill with hepatitis A, Dr. del Rio brought Dr. Guarner the class notes so she wouldn’t fall behind. The study buddies later became a couple and married just before coming to the United States for residency.
With their expertise in infectious disease, Dr. del Rio and Dr. Guarner have worked collaboratively in the past, but the couple says they’ve always maintained separate professional identities.
“We try to create our own spaces,” Dr. del Rio said. “You try to keep your personal and professional identity independent as much as possible. You don’t want people to say, ‘Oh, you got this or you’re doing this because you are married to this other person.’ You want, to a certain degree, intellectual independence.”
This has been easier in some ways because Dr. del Rio and Dr. Guarner have different last names. Over the years they have frequently encountered people who had no idea that they are married.
“One time, we were both down in the lab and Jeanette was discussing a case, and she started teasing me or poking me, making fun,” recalls Dr. del Rio. “Some of the ID fellows were like, ‘Oh my God, who the hell is this woman?’ They didn’t realize she was my wife.”
Since the COVID-19 outbreak, both Dr. Guarner and Dr. del Rio have been involved in different ways with the pandemic. Dr. Del Rio has seen patients, conducted clinical trials, and given hundreds of local and national interviews about the virus. As a laboratory director, Dr. Guarner has validated tests for the diagnosis of COVID-19 and counseled staff on exposure concerns.
“An important aspect has also been to make sure that our laboratory technologists understand the disease and the need for the different protection elements we have had to use in the hospital,” she said. “In many ways I have had to scale down fears the techs have had when handling specimens from these patients.”
In their own words
What was one of your most surprising discoveries?
Jeannette: During the anthrax attacks, we received lots of tissues on live patients, particularly skin biopsies from different parts of the country where pathologists had concerns that there was anthrax. From New York, we received more than 50 skin biopsies and discovered that the necrotic lesions suspected of anthrax had Rickettsia in them. In other words, we discovered that rickettsialpox – a mite-borne infectious disease – was circulating in the city, which was unknown at the time.
Describe a challenge that you overcame:
Carlos: When I was appointed as director of the National AIDS Council of Mexico (CONASIDA), I was quite young, only 32 years old. I had to learn to listen to others who had expertise and institutional memory, to respect their opinions, and at the same time to push for change. A huge challenge was the role of the Catholic Church and conservative groups that were adamantly against condom promotion. Thus, I learned how to advance policies based in science without being confrontational.
Have you ever been famous for anything other than your work?
Jeannette: In 2017, a tree fell on our house during Hurricane Irma. It fell right on my husband’s office a few minutes after he left the room. Fortunately, I have always been small and flexible, and I crawled through the rubble to save our valuables before they were ruined by the rain. Later, a local Atlanta TV news crew was in the neighborhood reporting on the damage, and I told them to come to our house if they wanted to see real damage. That night, we were on the local news.
Power couple Paul and Mary Klotman
When Mary Klotman, MD, was offered an opportunity with the National Institutes of Health in 1991, Paul Klotman, MD, didn’t hesitate to resign his post at Duke University, Durham, N.C., and join his wife in Washington. Paul says he wanted to support Mary’s aspirations, even though it meant an uncertain track for his own career.
Fortunately for the Klotmans, the move proved instrumental for both of their careers and spurred one of their proudest scientific breakthroughs.
At NIH, Mary was a member of the Public Health Service and worked in the laboratory of tumor cell biology, and Paul became chief of the institute’s molecular medicine section in the laboratory of developmental biology. Together, their work led to the first animal model of HIV-associated nephropathy using transgenic techniques. The Klotmans and their team demonstrated that HIV resides in and evolves separately in kidney cells, a critical step in HIV-associated kidney disease.
“That’s where our longstanding collaboration around HIV-associated nephropathy started,” Mary says. “Paul and I have a passion for research, and we’ve had the same grant together for 25 years.”
After their successful stint at NIH, the Klotmans next climbed the ranks at the Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai, where Paul started as chief of the nephrology division and became chair of medicine, and Mary became chief of infectious diseases and co-director of Mount Sinai’s Global Health and Emerging Pathogens Institute.
Today, Mary and Paul are the first – and only – married couple in the United States to lead separate medical schools. Mary is dean and vice chancellor for health affairs at Duke, and Paul is president and executive dean of Baylor College of Medicine, Houston.
Despite their 1,100-mile separation, the Klotmans manage their relationship in an unconventional way that some might balk at: Every Friday, one spouse hops on a plane and travels to the other for a date night and weekend.
“When we started this crazy lifestyle, we committed to being together every weekend,” says Mary. “And in 10 years – before COVID – we missed only one weekend together.”
The Klotmans say the scheduled time together places a hard end to each work week and enables them to truly enjoy their quality time.
“Friday at noon, I’m on the plane going to Durham, and I know that in 2 hours I’m going to have a date with my wife,” Paul said. “There are institutions that we’ve run into that think you have to be 7 days a week on site. But Duke and Baylor have been very supportive [of our situation].”
No doubt, the arrangement means a lot of time in the air for the couple. Paul says he travels about 150,000 miles every year by plane.
Having dual leadership positions in academic medicine has kept the Klotmans tightly connected, and the couple says their strong partnership has contributed to their success.
“It’s really been helpful having a deep understanding of our career paths, because we’ve been able to understand when one of us needed to be really focused on work and the other one would step back a bit with the kids and vice versa,” Mary said.
“There’s no question that we wouldn’t be in the positions we are in now if it weren’t for the fact that we’ve had each other,” Paul said.
In their own words
What is a little-known title that you have?
Paul: Purse-carrier for my wife. When she is honored at a national meeting or event, she often stands up and hands me her purse. I now make sure I have on an appropriate outfit that matches the purse.
Tell us about your children.
Mary: We had a very traumatic first pregnancy that we lost. Six years later, we adopted our first child, which was an amazing blessing. Our second son was Duke’s first successful frozen embryo transfer.
Describe a memorable moment in your relationship.
Paul: As we were leaving for our honeymoon, Mary’s dad handed me this booklet. It was the receipts for Mary’s medical school loans for the next 10 years. He said, “Congratulations, she’s all yours!”
A version of this article first appeared on Medscape.com.
When people started dying from lethal anthrax spores sent through the mail in 2001, infectious disease expert Jeannette Guarner, MD, was called to Florida and Connecticut to analyze the bodies. She and her pathology team investigated how the bacteria had entered the victims and examined tissue samples from across the country to discern the scale of the attacks.
After conducting autopsies and identifying that inhalation anthrax had caused the deaths, Dr. Guarner rushed home to Atlanta just in time for Thanksgiving. Exhausted, the beloved family chef still managed to cook the big turkey that holiday, but she enlisted help with dessert.
“She returned home on Thanksgiving at like three in the morning,” recalls Carlos del Rio, MD. “She said to me, ‘In order for us to have Thanksgiving, you have to be in charge of the pies.’ When I told my daughter, she said, ‘This is going to be a disaster! If mom’s not cooking, this is not going to be good.’”
“It didn’t turn out that bad,” Dr. Guarner laughs. “There was dessert.”
As two of the top infectious disease experts in the country, Dr. Guarner and Dr. del Rio are no strangers to juggling their personal lives around disease outbreaks, last-minute travel, and pressing research.
Former director of the clinical laboratory at Mexico’s National Cancer Institute, Dr. Guarner worked for the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention for 10 years, where she played an integral part in the discovery of SARS. She and her team identified that a coronavirus was in cultures taken from a health care worker who died after working in Asia and determined through molecular testing that the virus was different from any other coronaviruses at the time.
Dr. Guarner went on to search for the novel virus in tissue samples and determine that it was SARS that had caused the damage. She is now a professor in the department of pathology and laboratory medicine at Emory University, Atlanta, medical director of the clinical laboratory at Emory University Hospital Midtown, and vice chair for faculty affairs.
Dr. Del Rio, who served as director of the National AIDS Council of Mexico, is a distinguished professor of medicine in Emory University’s division of infectious diseases and a professor of global health and epidemiology in the Rollins School of Public Health at Emory University. He is also co-director of the Emory Center for AIDS Research and co-principal investigator of the Emory-CDC HIV Clinical Trials Unit and the Emory Vaccine and Treatment Evaluation Unit.
Dr. Del Rio’s work in HIV prevention and care has made great strides, including developing the concept for the HIV Care Continuum, a public health model that outlines the stages that HIV patients go through, from diagnosis to achieving viral suppression. Dr. Del Rio, who is foreign secretary of the National Academy of Medicine, has also worked on emerging infections such as pandemic influenza and was a member of the WHO Influenza A (H1N1) Clinical Advisory Group and of the CDC Influenza A Task Force during the 2009 pandemic.
Dr. Del Rio and Dr. Guarner met during medical school in Mexico City. At first, the two carpooled to classes, but when Dr. Guarner fell ill with hepatitis A, Dr. del Rio brought Dr. Guarner the class notes so she wouldn’t fall behind. The study buddies later became a couple and married just before coming to the United States for residency.
With their expertise in infectious disease, Dr. del Rio and Dr. Guarner have worked collaboratively in the past, but the couple says they’ve always maintained separate professional identities.
“We try to create our own spaces,” Dr. del Rio said. “You try to keep your personal and professional identity independent as much as possible. You don’t want people to say, ‘Oh, you got this or you’re doing this because you are married to this other person.’ You want, to a certain degree, intellectual independence.”
This has been easier in some ways because Dr. del Rio and Dr. Guarner have different last names. Over the years they have frequently encountered people who had no idea that they are married.
“One time, we were both down in the lab and Jeanette was discussing a case, and she started teasing me or poking me, making fun,” recalls Dr. del Rio. “Some of the ID fellows were like, ‘Oh my God, who the hell is this woman?’ They didn’t realize she was my wife.”
Since the COVID-19 outbreak, both Dr. Guarner and Dr. del Rio have been involved in different ways with the pandemic. Dr. Del Rio has seen patients, conducted clinical trials, and given hundreds of local and national interviews about the virus. As a laboratory director, Dr. Guarner has validated tests for the diagnosis of COVID-19 and counseled staff on exposure concerns.
“An important aspect has also been to make sure that our laboratory technologists understand the disease and the need for the different protection elements we have had to use in the hospital,” she said. “In many ways I have had to scale down fears the techs have had when handling specimens from these patients.”
In their own words
What was one of your most surprising discoveries?
Jeannette: During the anthrax attacks, we received lots of tissues on live patients, particularly skin biopsies from different parts of the country where pathologists had concerns that there was anthrax. From New York, we received more than 50 skin biopsies and discovered that the necrotic lesions suspected of anthrax had Rickettsia in them. In other words, we discovered that rickettsialpox – a mite-borne infectious disease – was circulating in the city, which was unknown at the time.
Describe a challenge that you overcame:
Carlos: When I was appointed as director of the National AIDS Council of Mexico (CONASIDA), I was quite young, only 32 years old. I had to learn to listen to others who had expertise and institutional memory, to respect their opinions, and at the same time to push for change. A huge challenge was the role of the Catholic Church and conservative groups that were adamantly against condom promotion. Thus, I learned how to advance policies based in science without being confrontational.
Have you ever been famous for anything other than your work?
Jeannette: In 2017, a tree fell on our house during Hurricane Irma. It fell right on my husband’s office a few minutes after he left the room. Fortunately, I have always been small and flexible, and I crawled through the rubble to save our valuables before they were ruined by the rain. Later, a local Atlanta TV news crew was in the neighborhood reporting on the damage, and I told them to come to our house if they wanted to see real damage. That night, we were on the local news.
Power couple Paul and Mary Klotman
When Mary Klotman, MD, was offered an opportunity with the National Institutes of Health in 1991, Paul Klotman, MD, didn’t hesitate to resign his post at Duke University, Durham, N.C., and join his wife in Washington. Paul says he wanted to support Mary’s aspirations, even though it meant an uncertain track for his own career.
Fortunately for the Klotmans, the move proved instrumental for both of their careers and spurred one of their proudest scientific breakthroughs.
At NIH, Mary was a member of the Public Health Service and worked in the laboratory of tumor cell biology, and Paul became chief of the institute’s molecular medicine section in the laboratory of developmental biology. Together, their work led to the first animal model of HIV-associated nephropathy using transgenic techniques. The Klotmans and their team demonstrated that HIV resides in and evolves separately in kidney cells, a critical step in HIV-associated kidney disease.
“That’s where our longstanding collaboration around HIV-associated nephropathy started,” Mary says. “Paul and I have a passion for research, and we’ve had the same grant together for 25 years.”
After their successful stint at NIH, the Klotmans next climbed the ranks at the Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai, where Paul started as chief of the nephrology division and became chair of medicine, and Mary became chief of infectious diseases and co-director of Mount Sinai’s Global Health and Emerging Pathogens Institute.
Today, Mary and Paul are the first – and only – married couple in the United States to lead separate medical schools. Mary is dean and vice chancellor for health affairs at Duke, and Paul is president and executive dean of Baylor College of Medicine, Houston.
Despite their 1,100-mile separation, the Klotmans manage their relationship in an unconventional way that some might balk at: Every Friday, one spouse hops on a plane and travels to the other for a date night and weekend.
“When we started this crazy lifestyle, we committed to being together every weekend,” says Mary. “And in 10 years – before COVID – we missed only one weekend together.”
The Klotmans say the scheduled time together places a hard end to each work week and enables them to truly enjoy their quality time.
“Friday at noon, I’m on the plane going to Durham, and I know that in 2 hours I’m going to have a date with my wife,” Paul said. “There are institutions that we’ve run into that think you have to be 7 days a week on site. But Duke and Baylor have been very supportive [of our situation].”
No doubt, the arrangement means a lot of time in the air for the couple. Paul says he travels about 150,000 miles every year by plane.
Having dual leadership positions in academic medicine has kept the Klotmans tightly connected, and the couple says their strong partnership has contributed to their success.
“It’s really been helpful having a deep understanding of our career paths, because we’ve been able to understand when one of us needed to be really focused on work and the other one would step back a bit with the kids and vice versa,” Mary said.
“There’s no question that we wouldn’t be in the positions we are in now if it weren’t for the fact that we’ve had each other,” Paul said.
In their own words
What is a little-known title that you have?
Paul: Purse-carrier for my wife. When she is honored at a national meeting or event, she often stands up and hands me her purse. I now make sure I have on an appropriate outfit that matches the purse.
Tell us about your children.
Mary: We had a very traumatic first pregnancy that we lost. Six years later, we adopted our first child, which was an amazing blessing. Our second son was Duke’s first successful frozen embryo transfer.
Describe a memorable moment in your relationship.
Paul: As we were leaving for our honeymoon, Mary’s dad handed me this booklet. It was the receipts for Mary’s medical school loans for the next 10 years. He said, “Congratulations, she’s all yours!”
A version of this article first appeared on Medscape.com.
When people started dying from lethal anthrax spores sent through the mail in 2001, infectious disease expert Jeannette Guarner, MD, was called to Florida and Connecticut to analyze the bodies. She and her pathology team investigated how the bacteria had entered the victims and examined tissue samples from across the country to discern the scale of the attacks.
After conducting autopsies and identifying that inhalation anthrax had caused the deaths, Dr. Guarner rushed home to Atlanta just in time for Thanksgiving. Exhausted, the beloved family chef still managed to cook the big turkey that holiday, but she enlisted help with dessert.
“She returned home on Thanksgiving at like three in the morning,” recalls Carlos del Rio, MD. “She said to me, ‘In order for us to have Thanksgiving, you have to be in charge of the pies.’ When I told my daughter, she said, ‘This is going to be a disaster! If mom’s not cooking, this is not going to be good.’”
“It didn’t turn out that bad,” Dr. Guarner laughs. “There was dessert.”
As two of the top infectious disease experts in the country, Dr. Guarner and Dr. del Rio are no strangers to juggling their personal lives around disease outbreaks, last-minute travel, and pressing research.
Former director of the clinical laboratory at Mexico’s National Cancer Institute, Dr. Guarner worked for the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention for 10 years, where she played an integral part in the discovery of SARS. She and her team identified that a coronavirus was in cultures taken from a health care worker who died after working in Asia and determined through molecular testing that the virus was different from any other coronaviruses at the time.
Dr. Guarner went on to search for the novel virus in tissue samples and determine that it was SARS that had caused the damage. She is now a professor in the department of pathology and laboratory medicine at Emory University, Atlanta, medical director of the clinical laboratory at Emory University Hospital Midtown, and vice chair for faculty affairs.
Dr. Del Rio, who served as director of the National AIDS Council of Mexico, is a distinguished professor of medicine in Emory University’s division of infectious diseases and a professor of global health and epidemiology in the Rollins School of Public Health at Emory University. He is also co-director of the Emory Center for AIDS Research and co-principal investigator of the Emory-CDC HIV Clinical Trials Unit and the Emory Vaccine and Treatment Evaluation Unit.
Dr. Del Rio’s work in HIV prevention and care has made great strides, including developing the concept for the HIV Care Continuum, a public health model that outlines the stages that HIV patients go through, from diagnosis to achieving viral suppression. Dr. Del Rio, who is foreign secretary of the National Academy of Medicine, has also worked on emerging infections such as pandemic influenza and was a member of the WHO Influenza A (H1N1) Clinical Advisory Group and of the CDC Influenza A Task Force during the 2009 pandemic.
Dr. Del Rio and Dr. Guarner met during medical school in Mexico City. At first, the two carpooled to classes, but when Dr. Guarner fell ill with hepatitis A, Dr. del Rio brought Dr. Guarner the class notes so she wouldn’t fall behind. The study buddies later became a couple and married just before coming to the United States for residency.
With their expertise in infectious disease, Dr. del Rio and Dr. Guarner have worked collaboratively in the past, but the couple says they’ve always maintained separate professional identities.
“We try to create our own spaces,” Dr. del Rio said. “You try to keep your personal and professional identity independent as much as possible. You don’t want people to say, ‘Oh, you got this or you’re doing this because you are married to this other person.’ You want, to a certain degree, intellectual independence.”
This has been easier in some ways because Dr. del Rio and Dr. Guarner have different last names. Over the years they have frequently encountered people who had no idea that they are married.
“One time, we were both down in the lab and Jeanette was discussing a case, and she started teasing me or poking me, making fun,” recalls Dr. del Rio. “Some of the ID fellows were like, ‘Oh my God, who the hell is this woman?’ They didn’t realize she was my wife.”
Since the COVID-19 outbreak, both Dr. Guarner and Dr. del Rio have been involved in different ways with the pandemic. Dr. Del Rio has seen patients, conducted clinical trials, and given hundreds of local and national interviews about the virus. As a laboratory director, Dr. Guarner has validated tests for the diagnosis of COVID-19 and counseled staff on exposure concerns.
“An important aspect has also been to make sure that our laboratory technologists understand the disease and the need for the different protection elements we have had to use in the hospital,” she said. “In many ways I have had to scale down fears the techs have had when handling specimens from these patients.”
In their own words
What was one of your most surprising discoveries?
Jeannette: During the anthrax attacks, we received lots of tissues on live patients, particularly skin biopsies from different parts of the country where pathologists had concerns that there was anthrax. From New York, we received more than 50 skin biopsies and discovered that the necrotic lesions suspected of anthrax had Rickettsia in them. In other words, we discovered that rickettsialpox – a mite-borne infectious disease – was circulating in the city, which was unknown at the time.
Describe a challenge that you overcame:
Carlos: When I was appointed as director of the National AIDS Council of Mexico (CONASIDA), I was quite young, only 32 years old. I had to learn to listen to others who had expertise and institutional memory, to respect their opinions, and at the same time to push for change. A huge challenge was the role of the Catholic Church and conservative groups that were adamantly against condom promotion. Thus, I learned how to advance policies based in science without being confrontational.
Have you ever been famous for anything other than your work?
Jeannette: In 2017, a tree fell on our house during Hurricane Irma. It fell right on my husband’s office a few minutes after he left the room. Fortunately, I have always been small and flexible, and I crawled through the rubble to save our valuables before they were ruined by the rain. Later, a local Atlanta TV news crew was in the neighborhood reporting on the damage, and I told them to come to our house if they wanted to see real damage. That night, we were on the local news.
Power couple Paul and Mary Klotman
When Mary Klotman, MD, was offered an opportunity with the National Institutes of Health in 1991, Paul Klotman, MD, didn’t hesitate to resign his post at Duke University, Durham, N.C., and join his wife in Washington. Paul says he wanted to support Mary’s aspirations, even though it meant an uncertain track for his own career.
Fortunately for the Klotmans, the move proved instrumental for both of their careers and spurred one of their proudest scientific breakthroughs.
At NIH, Mary was a member of the Public Health Service and worked in the laboratory of tumor cell biology, and Paul became chief of the institute’s molecular medicine section in the laboratory of developmental biology. Together, their work led to the first animal model of HIV-associated nephropathy using transgenic techniques. The Klotmans and their team demonstrated that HIV resides in and evolves separately in kidney cells, a critical step in HIV-associated kidney disease.
“That’s where our longstanding collaboration around HIV-associated nephropathy started,” Mary says. “Paul and I have a passion for research, and we’ve had the same grant together for 25 years.”
After their successful stint at NIH, the Klotmans next climbed the ranks at the Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai, where Paul started as chief of the nephrology division and became chair of medicine, and Mary became chief of infectious diseases and co-director of Mount Sinai’s Global Health and Emerging Pathogens Institute.
Today, Mary and Paul are the first – and only – married couple in the United States to lead separate medical schools. Mary is dean and vice chancellor for health affairs at Duke, and Paul is president and executive dean of Baylor College of Medicine, Houston.
Despite their 1,100-mile separation, the Klotmans manage their relationship in an unconventional way that some might balk at: Every Friday, one spouse hops on a plane and travels to the other for a date night and weekend.
“When we started this crazy lifestyle, we committed to being together every weekend,” says Mary. “And in 10 years – before COVID – we missed only one weekend together.”
The Klotmans say the scheduled time together places a hard end to each work week and enables them to truly enjoy their quality time.
“Friday at noon, I’m on the plane going to Durham, and I know that in 2 hours I’m going to have a date with my wife,” Paul said. “There are institutions that we’ve run into that think you have to be 7 days a week on site. But Duke and Baylor have been very supportive [of our situation].”
No doubt, the arrangement means a lot of time in the air for the couple. Paul says he travels about 150,000 miles every year by plane.
Having dual leadership positions in academic medicine has kept the Klotmans tightly connected, and the couple says their strong partnership has contributed to their success.
“It’s really been helpful having a deep understanding of our career paths, because we’ve been able to understand when one of us needed to be really focused on work and the other one would step back a bit with the kids and vice versa,” Mary said.
“There’s no question that we wouldn’t be in the positions we are in now if it weren’t for the fact that we’ve had each other,” Paul said.
In their own words
What is a little-known title that you have?
Paul: Purse-carrier for my wife. When she is honored at a national meeting or event, she often stands up and hands me her purse. I now make sure I have on an appropriate outfit that matches the purse.
Tell us about your children.
Mary: We had a very traumatic first pregnancy that we lost. Six years later, we adopted our first child, which was an amazing blessing. Our second son was Duke’s first successful frozen embryo transfer.
Describe a memorable moment in your relationship.
Paul: As we were leaving for our honeymoon, Mary’s dad handed me this booklet. It was the receipts for Mary’s medical school loans for the next 10 years. He said, “Congratulations, she’s all yours!”
A version of this article first appeared on Medscape.com.