The Age Gappers
New York magazine|December 18, 2023
They say they're happy. Why is it so hard to believe them?
By Lila Shapiro. Self-Portraits taken by the subjects
The Age Gappers

Jessica Moss met Kevin Hardesty in the summer of 2000 at a feature-film production company in Los Angeles. He was a 37-year-old executive; she was a 19-year-old intern.

Moss first spotted Hardesty while she was doing paperwork in the operations department: He strolled by wearing a silm maroon Prada dress shirt tucked into a pair of perfectly cut trousers and had thick horn-rimmed glasses. On the last day of her internship, she followed him to the elevators as he was leaving to go home and asked him out to lunch. As the elevator doors closed, he shrugged and said, "Well, I'm listed." Moss looked him up in the white pages, and they went out a few times after that, but ultimately Hardesty told her it couldn't happen. "You're too young," he said. "You need to go live your life."

Moss moped through her first trip to Paris that Christmas. She talked about him constantly with her friends. In 2004, she ran into him walking down Larchmont Boulevard, and they eventually had dinner. She'd just moved into an apartment with a boyfriend her age, soon to be her husband, and they shared a puppy. By 2013, that marriage had fallen apart. That year, Hardesty reached out on Facebook to wish her a happy birthday. "We've been inseparable ever since," Moss said. They got married in 2017, when she was 36 and he was 54.

Esta historia es de la edición December 18, 2023 de New York magazine.

Comience su prueba gratuita de Magzter GOLD de 7 días para acceder a miles de historias premium seleccionadas y a más de 9,000 revistas y periódicos.

Esta historia es de la edición December 18, 2023 de New York magazine.

Comience su prueba gratuita de Magzter GOLD de 7 días para acceder a miles de historias premium seleccionadas y a más de 9,000 revistas y periódicos.

MÁS HISTORIAS DE NEW YORK MAGAZINEVer todo
THE BEST ART SHOWS OF THE YEAR
New York magazine

THE BEST ART SHOWS OF THE YEAR

IN NOVEMBER, Sotheby's made history when it sold for a million bucks a painting made by artificial intelligence. Ai-Da, \"the first humanoid robot artist to have an artwork auctioned by a major auction house,\" created a portrait of Alan Turing that resembles nothing more than a bad Francis Bacon rip-off. Still, the auction house described the sale as \"a new frontier in the global art market.\"

time-read
2 minutos  |
December 16-29, 2024
THE BIGGEST PODCAST MOMENTS OF THE YEAR
New York magazine

THE BIGGEST PODCAST MOMENTS OF THE YEAR

A STRANGE THING happened with podcasts in 2024: The industry was repeatedly thrust into the spotlight owing to a preponderance of head-turning events and a presidential-election cycle that radically foregrounded the medium's consequential nature. To reflect this, we've carved out a list of ten big moments from the year as refracted through podcasting.

time-read
2 minutos  |
December 16-29, 2024
THE BEST BOOKS OF THE YEAR
New York magazine

THE BEST BOOKS OF THE YEAR

THE YEAR IN CULTURE - BEST BOOKS

time-read
3 minutos  |
December 16-29, 2024
THE BEST THEATER OF THE YEAR
New York magazine

THE BEST THEATER OF THE YEAR

IT'S BEEN a year of successful straight plays, even measured by a metric at which they usually do poorly: ticket sales. Partially that's owed to Hollywood stars: Jeremy Strong, Jim Parsons, Rachel Zegler, Rachel McAdams (to my mind, the most compelling).

time-read
4 minutos  |
December 16-29, 2024
THE BEST ALBUMS OF THE YEAR
New York magazine

THE BEST ALBUMS OF THE YEAR

2024 WAS one big stress test that presented artists with a choice: Face uncomfortable realities or serve distractions to the audience. Pop music turned inward while hip-hop weathered court cases and incalculable losses. Country struggled to reconcile conservative interests with a much wider base of artists. But the year's best music offered a reprieve.

time-read
3 minutos  |
December 16-29, 2024
THE BEST TELEVISION OF THE YEAR
New York magazine

THE BEST TELEVISION OF THE YEAR

IT WAS SURPRISING how much 2024 felt like an uneventful wake for the Peak TV era. There was still great television, but there was much more mid or meh television and far fewer moments when a critical mass of viewers seemed equally excited about the same series.

time-read
5 minutos  |
December 16-29, 2024
THE BEST COMEDY SPECIALS OF THE YEAR
New York magazine

THE BEST COMEDY SPECIALS OF THE YEAR

THE YEAR IN CULTURE - COMEDY SPECIALS

time-read
3 minutos  |
December 16-29, 2024
THE BEST MOVIES OF THE YEAR
New York magazine

THE BEST MOVIES OF THE YEAR

PEOPLE LOVED Megalopolis, hated it, puzzled over it, clipped it into memes, and tried to astroturf it into a camp classic, but, most important, they cared about it even though it featured none of the qualities you'd expect of a breakthrough work in these noisy times.

time-read
7 minutos  |
December 16-29, 2024
A Truly Great Time
New York magazine

A Truly Great Time

This was the year our city's new restaurants loosened up.

time-read
10+ minutos  |
December 16-29, 2024
The Art of the Well-Stuffed Stocking
New York magazine

The Art of the Well-Stuffed Stocking

THE CHRISTMAS ENTHUSIASTS on the Strategist team gathered to discuss the oversize socks they drape on their couches and what they put inside them.

time-read
3 minutos  |
December 16-29, 2024