A Love That Was Benched by Their Careers

The lives of Nathan Hecht and Harriet E. Miers began to intertwine in the early 1970s, shortly after they finished law school at Southern Methodist University in Dallas.

Soon, they were rising stars at the same law firm, and their lives seemed to be converging in every way. They were earnest, ambitious and increasingly affectionate with one another. Friends thought they would get married.

Instead, for 30 years, Hecht and Miers -- President Bush's Supreme Court nominee -- have nurtured a kinship that has entranced and confounded their closest friends. They are traditional conservatives content in a modern, nontraditional relationship, one that leaves plenty of time for their true love, their work, to take center stage.

Romantic at times, the relationship has played an important role in their ascent to power -- she as White House counsel, he as a justice of the Texas Supreme Court, where he has served for 15 years.

"I think they thought seriously about getting married," said Dallas commercial litigation attorney Brady Sparks, who lived across the hall from Hecht in law school and has been friends with Hecht and Miers ever since. "They both decided that it just wasn't in the cards for the agenda they both wanted, and that was to do about three lifetimes worth of work in one lifetime."

The Rev. Ron Key, their pastor, said God called him to preach, not to play matchmaker. He said that in his long career as a minister, theirs was the only relationship that had ever tempted him to intervene.

"It's been great to watch -- and a little puzzling sometimes," Key said. "Their relationship has been such a special one. Sometimes I think they wanted to protect how special it was by not getting married."

While Miers, 60, has holed up in Washington in recent days, making the rounds of senators but declining to speak about her nomination in public, Hecht, 55, has become her de facto spokesman.

He has long been one of the most conservative members of the Texas Supreme Court, and Bush's supporters have encouraged him to talk about Miers, largely in an effort to assuage conservatives who remain unconvinced that she is a stalwart ally.

He has spoken passionately to reporters and advocacy groups about her qualifications for the court -- and about her decision to become a born-again Christian and her opposition to abortion.