A ‘90s Couple: Judy & Stephen

They met at the gym. She was teaching aerobics. He was working out. She was older: 38. He was younger: 26.

Meet Judy Struther and Stephen Samuels, a couple for the ‘90s.

When they got together six years ago, it wasn’t to be trend-setters or social innovators or explorers on the new frontier of male-female relationships. It was simply to be together.

“I was interested in him, of course. He’s terrific,” says Struther. “But when I found out how old he was, I thought to myself, ‘You dirty old woman. How could you?’ . . . If he hadn’t made the first move, nothing would have happened.”

But he did make the first move. “As far as I was concerned she was one of the neatest people I’d ever met,” Samuels says. “Age was never a factor, I was so attracted to the person herself.”

After six years of living together with a commitment as strong as marriage, the Marina del Rey couple has faced few age-related problems--and none of them, they say, serious.

They negotiated a move from Washington, where Struther’s personal-training business is based, to accommodate Samuels’ desire to pursue an acting career. They’ve survived a blending of interests and life goals.

“We are at different places in our careers, as one would expect of two people 12 years apart,” says Struther, who also develops youth programs for Cities and Schools, a Los Angeles-based foundation. But at 44, she is less interested in building a career than Samuels is.

“That is really the only time age is a factor for us--when her life experience covers something I haven’t done yet,” says Samuels. “She may be tempted to tell me what to do and I want to learn it for myself. I want to make my own mistakes.”

Neither Struther nor Samuels believes they made a mistake in getting together. “The old assumptions just don’t apply,” says Struther. “I don’t play a mothering role and he doesn’t act like a kid. I have a very high level of energy and he can keep up. He’s also extremely attractive and I like that too.

“The longer we are together,” she adds, “the less age means to us. That wasn’t the reason we were attracted to each other. If anything, we were attracted in spite of it. But now, (the age difference) just doesn’t matter at all. . . . “ One surprise has been that to some others, it does matter. “A lot of women who find Stephen attractive assume, because I am older, that they can have him,” says Struther.

Nonsense, says Samuels. “I never thought of her as 12 years older. Not physically. Not intellectually. She’s just great person. I’m very fortunate.”