In 1993, a 32-year-old Jewish attorney named Alan Gurvey stood up in "The Oprah Show" audience and said something shocking: He refused to date Jewish women.
"Jewish women are identical... From their looks right down to their attitudes," he said back then. "They've got short, dark hair with makeup and big hips, and their attitudes? I mean, I don't even need to go out with a woman. I just fax them my resume: 'Ivy-league lawyer.'"
Oprah challenged Gurvey, saying that his experience couldn't be true of all Jewish women, and that surely there must be a woman within his religion who wasn't solely interested in his wallet.
"Only my mother," he quipped.
That show left many viewers outraged, which Gurvey quickly discovered after the episode aired. Twenty years later, he reflects on the experience and provides a rather interesting update to "Oprah: Where Are They Now?"
"Dating after the show was very difficult for me. The cloud of 'The Oprah Show' hung over my head. People recognized me all the time," Gurvey says. "'The Oprah Show' really caused me to take a pause and re-invent myself."
He then embarked on a journey of self-discovery and soul-searching. "[I] started to realize that a person is simply a person regardless of their religion, color of their skin or whatever."
Gurvey also began to understand how his harsh attitude would prevent him from truly being open to the possibility of love and finding someone to share his life with -- something he desperately wanted. "I wanted children. I wanted a loving wife. I wanted to be able to have that stereotyped white-picket-fence experience," he says. "I knew I wasn't going to be able to do it with the kind of attitude that I displayed on 'The Oprah Show.'"
Today, with a completely different attitude than the one viewers saw two decades ago, Gurvey says that he has indeed found love and happiness through his wife, Nancy.
"I'm so incredibly happy with her and life has really changed," he says with a smile. "Nancy is Jewish."
For her part, Nancy had been unaware of the details of Gurvey's past "Oprah Show" appearance. When she watched it, she was shocked. "I was cringing, definitely," she says. "He didn't even seem like the same person to me."
The couple now has two young children, a toddler son and infant daughter. "We have celebrated all the Jewish holidays, we go to synagogue together, all four of us," Gurvey says. "It's been an amazing experience."
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