BILL Higgins is a former FBI agent and retired Navy captain. He carries his solid, 6-foot-2 frame with pride, and shakes your hand with a confidence that lets you know right off the bat that he don’t take no crap from nobody.
Yet – amazingly – this 55-year-old man’s man is the first to admit to playing a happy second fiddle to his power girl of a wife. Heck, he’s got a business card with the occupation marked ‘Spouse” to prove it. He also wants to start a club for hen-pecked spouses. That’s the reason I’m summoned for this interview.
Higgins, you see, is the husband of glamorous Manhattan businesswoman Barbara Corcoran, owner of the Corcoran Group, a hugely prosperous residential real estate business, whose clients number Jerry Seinfeld, Harrison Ford, Robin Williams, Sean ‘Puffy” Combs, Giorgio Armani and Diane Keaton.
CNN recently called her ‘the most sought-after broker in New York.” The Wall Street Journal quotes her regularly. Her photograph appears in all the gossip columns.
In other words, Corcoran is everywhere.
And where does that put Bill Higgins?
Even he’s not quite sure.
‘Now, what is this all about?” Higgins asks his wife’s company’s publicist as the three of us convene in the sunroom of the couple’s tastefully decorated, two-bedroom apartment on East 73rd Street.
Dressed casually in slacks, a white Ralph Lauren button-down shirt and no tie on the afternoon of our interview, Higgins, initially seems to fit the stereotype of a hesitant self-effacer to a tee.
Yes, he says when asked, most of the time people he meets only want to talk about his famous wife.
So why exacerbate the situation with a business card that reads ‘Spouse”?
He makes a joke:
‘About a year ago, I first asked her to make me chairman of the board, but she said, ‘no way,’ ” Higgins recalls. ‘So I thought of an alternative. And you know what’s better than chairman? Spouse.”
Well, sure.
But, really now, Bill: Why would anyone want to draw attention to their wife’s big-time status by handing out a business card with an imaginary subordinate title on it instead of proffering one of their own professional calling cards?
Higgins gets serious: ‘I think it shows confidence,” he says. ‘I do it for smiles.’
Some might accuse that handing out your wife’s business cards is just another way to give her game a little extra promotion.
Wrong again, says Higgins. He calls the cards a testament and tribute to his wife’s hard work. After all, Corcoran’s millions are entirely self-made. She started the Corcoran Group in the ’70s with a piddling $1,000 investment.
Slowly but surely, you can’t help but feel he’s establishing his own ground. I notice that he sits taller and when, asked about himself, reveals he was a Navy captain in Operation Desert Storm. He won’t let me leave without proudly showing off his home office, covered with awards and military citations.
Back on the subject of the apparently emasculating business card, he becomes more diffident.
In fact, he says, he only distributes these cards while socializing in his wife’s business domain.
And, to her defense, wifey plays fair while trodding on her hubby’s turf. Barbara Corcoron adds Higgins to her surname when accompanying her man to events related to his work, which currently includes the marketing of a new computer chip patent for Mindsong Inc., a company in St. Paul, Minn., and the development of an assisted living community for the elderly in his hometown of Hillsdale, N.J.
The Higgins-Corcorans met on the job in the 1980s. He was, it emerges, also in real estate. Their relationship began when the two good-naturedly locked horns while serving on the same company board of directors. For a few years, they challenged each other to get the best publicity and to see who could win the most advertising trophies. When their flirty competition dissolved to love, the couple wed in 1988. In 1994, they had a son, Tommy. (Higgins also has four children from an earlier marriage.)
In 1997, Higgins sold his real estate company, and took on various consultancies. The care of Tommy is left up to a live-in nanny. Mom and dad indulge in kiddie time while at home in Manhattan by taking him to swimming or to French classes. Weekends and holidays might include trips to Europe or their Long Island beach house.
Couple time for Higgins and Corcoran includes 7 a.m. workouts with a personal trainer who comes to their apartment three days a week. Since they arrive home at different times each night and more than often end up ordering in, the two try to dine together on the weekends. She loves to cook in the kitchen; he’s a pro on the grill.
But just because his life is already full doesn’t mean Bill Higgins isn’t open to new projects. This is why he says he wants to reach out to other second fiddles by starting a Spouse Club.
The wives of powerful businessmen all over the world can join organized support or social groups. However, Higgins points out, men in the same position have historically been left out of the fun. An all-male Spouse Club would give an outlet to these forgotten souls where they could meet in friendly forum, compare problems, and share tips for coping with their side status. He envisions a Spouse Club hot line or Web site where husbands of famous females could get ‘Ann Landers-style advice.”
Does Higgins think all this touchy-feely communicating among men might be emasculating? Nope. ‘I think it’s the reverse, and that [admitting to being proud of your powerful wife] makes you seem much more secure in who you are,” he says. ‘It shows you’re confident but that you’re not trying to prove anything.
‘I do think when the wife is a higher income-earner and has more [public] visibility that it can be debilitating to a relationship,” says Higgins. ‘It can affect the person’s ego.”
But not his.
‘I’m proud of my wife: And I’m proud to call myself her spouse.”