NEW YORK — Marian Javits, the arts patron, bon vivant, and feminist who cut a singular figure in New York while her husband, Jacob, devoted long years in Washington as the state’s long-serving US senator, died Feb. 28 in Manhattan. She was 92.
Her death was confirmed by her son, Joshua.
Marian Javits, who grew up in poverty and later became part of a glamorous social set, provided ample fodder for gossip columnists with her nightclubbing, her long-distance marriage to a spouse who was 21 years older, and her separate professional life, which crossed prevailing boundaries when she became a lobbyist for the Iranian government.
She was unambiguous about her relationship with her husband, Senator Jacob K. Javits, a Republican, who was first elected in 1956, served until his defeat by Alfonse M D’Amato in 1980 and died in 1986.
“I am his mistress. His work is his wife,’’ Ms. Javits was quoted as saying in Myra MacPherson’s book “The Power Lovers: An Intimate Look at Politicians and Their Marriages’’ (1975).
The senator himself made no excuses. In his memoir, “Javits: The Autobiography of a Public Man’’ (1981), he wrote, “Congress was my wife in the sense that my work there limited my marriage, rather than the other way around.’’
He acknowledged that on their wedding night, he brought newspapers to read in their honeymoon hotel room.
“There have always been papers between us,’’ Marian Javits said.
The limits of their separate careers were tested in 1976 after The Village Voice disclosed that Ms. Javits had registered as a foreign agent to work for the public relations firm Ruder & Finn representing the airline Iran Air and the Iranian government, which was headed at the time by Shah Mohammed Reza Pahlavi.
The potential conflict — the senator was a ranking member of the Foreign Relations Committee, and Iran had supported a UN resolution equating Zionism with racism — provoked an outcry in Congress and among the senator’s constituents.
Within a few weeks, Ms. Javits reluctantly resigned as a senior vice president of the company and gave up her $67,000 fee (about $285,000 in today’s dollars).
“I have been encouraged by the hope that my experience will in some way mark a step forward in the historic effort to establish real professional independence among working husbands and wives,’’ she said at the time.
She added: “Some may feel that my withdrawal marks a retreat. I do not see it that way. Perhaps a contribution has been made by bringing the problem into sharp public focus, and that the professional rights and freedom owed to both partners in a marriage will be honored and better understood.’’
The senator said, “I regret that my position in public life has placed limitations on the use by my wife of her talents in her chosen professional field.’’
Ms. Javits was active in many spheres. She lobbied Congress to establish the National Endowments for the Arts and the Humanities; supported programs to benefit struggling artists and the mentally ill; and was president of a partnership that sold limited-edition prints by leading painters.
In one instance, she persuaded the New York Telephone Co., to reproduce paintings on the back covers of its directories so that the books could be displayed face down on coffee tables.
She briefly wrote a social column for the New York Post in the early 1960s, and in 2013, she published a memoir, “Senator’s Wife: Ahead of My Time.’’
Marion Ann Burros (she spelled her first name Marian episodically, including later in life) was born Jan. 19, 1925, in Detroit, the granddaughter of Jewish immigrants from Russia.
After graduating from James Monroe High School, she studied drama at the New School for Social Research (without graduating) and unsuccessfully pursued an acting career in Hollywood. (She did, however, have a minor role as an FBI secretary in the 1960 movie “Who Was That Lady?’’ with Dean Martin, Tony Curtis, and Janet Leigh.)
She met Jacob Javits, a divorced lawyer at the time, in 1945, when they were working to elect Jonah J. Goldstein, the Republican-Liberal candidate for mayor. (William O’Dwyer, a Democrat, won.) They married two years later.
“Who am I?’’ Ms. Javits once asked. “I’m my husband’s wife, and I’m striving to be my own person.’’
