Michigan marriage full of surprises

During a single week in August, Faye Miller’s comfortable world vanished.

That’s when Miller, 51, a homemaker in Rochester Hills, Mich., took her therapist’s advice and started to examine her marriage.

Through Google and phone records, she learned:

* Her husband of 10 years, Dr. Kenneth Mitchell, already had a wife in California when he married Miller.

* In 2003 he married another woman in Quebec.

* And Mitchell, 48, who attended Lutheran church with Miller, had converted to Islam in 2002, taken the Arabic name Mustafa and traveled twice to Saudi Arabia on religious pilgrimages, according to court records.

Mitchell, who operates four podiatry clinics in the Detroit area, says in court filings that he thought he was divorced from his first wife, and that the third marriage was never finalized because the necessary papers were not filed. His attorney says the situation is a case of misunderstanding.

“I just thought he was working a lot of hours and away at medical conferences,” Miller said in a recent interview at her attorneys’ office. “It was devastating. It brought me to my knees.”

She is seeking an annulment and child support for their two children. A hearing is set for Thursday.

Faye Miller met Kenneth Mitchell in the late 1980s when they were co-workers at an environmental laboratory. She found him charming and mysterious.

“He was like a big teddy bear,” she said. “But very independent.”

She said Mitchell told her he once played for the National Football League’s San Francisco 49ers. The Detroit Free Press could find no record of his employment with that team.

They spent the next 10 years getting advanced degrees -- sometimes living together, sometimes apart. She eventually earned a doctorate in education. He graduated from podiatry school.

Miller said she learned in 1997 that Mitchell had been having an affair with a Canadian podiatrist, but he assured her that it was over. The couple went into counseling, and in 1999 they were married.

Miller had two children shortly afterward. Mitchell expanded his podiatry practice.

But he was gone frequently and often unreachable. Even on Sept. 11, 2001, when she was calling around the country trying to make sure he was safe, it took him two days to get back to her, she said.

She came to accept her lonely life as a single parent. But in early 2009, she began therapy to help deal with the death of her mother. Her therapist slowly encouraged her to examine her unusual marriage.

So, in the last week of August, she logged on to the family computer and started looking. She found papers in California showing that he had not divorced his first wife until long after he had married Miller, according to court records.

She knew then that her own marriage was invalid.

Then she began sorting through her husband’s cellphone numbers and found repeated calls to Canada. She called, heard the voice of the woman she had believed to be his former mistress, and hung up, she said. The woman called her the next day.

“She said, ‘We have a problem here,’ ” Miller recalled. “She said, ‘I think you’re married to my husband.’ ”

Mitchell, through his attorney, Stephen Barker, declined an interview request. Barker said Mitchell never meant to mislead any of the women.

The Canadian wife also refused an interview request, saying she didn’t want her reputation tarnished any further.

The California wife, who divorced Mitchell in 2002, could not be reached for comment.

Miller said she sometimes wondered whether her husband was having an affair. He was often away attending medical conferences, and sometimes did not come home after hospital rounds, telling her he was spending the night in the residents’ lounge.

An affair would have been a relief, she says, considering what she uncovered.

“You think you know somebody,” she said, shaking her head.

Mitchell’s explanation, based on court records, is that it’s all a big misunderstanding. He says he thought his divorce was final when he married Miller.

And he said the Islamic wedding in Canada, with 100 people attending, was a sham -- that he only pretended to marry her so that her parents could not force her into a prearranged marriage.

The idea, Barker said, was to “get her mother and father off her back. It’s a case where no good deed goes unpunished.”

Barker said the paperwork for the Canadian marriage was never finalized.

And, he said, Mitchell wants to maintain a loving relationship with Miller and their two children.

“It’s not reached Tiger Woods proportions yet,” Barker said. “I’ve seen stranger things happen.”

Miller sees little chance of that. The former college professor says she plans to return to work, and may leave Michigan with her children to start a new life.

“Men in power feel that the rules don’t apply to them,” she said.

“Well, the rules do apply.”

Brasier writes for the Detroit Free Press.