Art Garfunkel - Personal Life

Personal Life

Garfunkel married Linda Marie Grossman (b. 1944), an architect in 1972; they divorced in 1975. He has claimed that the marriage was turbulent and ended bitterly. Garfunkel has never spoken to her since and claims he never loved her.

He was also romantically involved with actress and photographer Laurie Bird from March 1974 (when he was 32 and she was 20) until her suicide in 1979. In a 1986 interview, Garfunkel said about his relationship with Laurie Bird "I asked myself constantly why I didn't marry her, because surely she was the apple of my eye. She was everything I was looking for in a woman. But I was very hurt by my first marriage, so as far as marriage to Laurie was concerned, I was extra scared. I was heartbroken. It laid me low. I used to get very sad when the sun went down. The nights were very lonely for me."

Garfunkel had a brief affair with actress Penny Marshall in the mid 1980s and credits her with helping him through his depression. Their friendship stayed strong even after the relationship's end. Garfunkel would later say of Marshall, "Everything changed. Penny is a sweet human being who can bring anybody down to earth. We had a lot of laughs, great sex and a ton of party nights".

In fall of 1985, Garfunkel met former model Kathryn (Kim) Cermak (born May 25, 1958) while shooting Good To Go. They married on September 18, 1988. The two have been married for over twenty years.

The two have two children, James, born December 15, 1990, and Beau Daniel, born October 5, 2005 via a surrogate mother.

Garfunkel is an avid reader and bibliophile; his website contains a year-by-year listing of every book he has read since 1968. Currently the list contains more than 1,000 books. He has also read the entire Random House Dictionary.

Garfunkel has an interest in the philosopher Jean-Jacques Rousseau, having twice read his book Confessions (according to his library, the book was the first and thousandth book he'd read).

Garfunkel has undertaken several long walks in his lifetime, writing poetry along the way. In the early 1980s, he walked across Japan in a matter of weeks. From 1983 to 1997, Garfunkel walked across America, taking 40 excursions to complete the route from New York City to the Pacific coast of Washington. In May 1998, Garfunkel began an incremented walk across Europe.

His all-time favorite pop song is The Beatles' "Here, There and Everywhere" and his all-time favorite album is Rumours by Fleetwood Mac. When asked about his musical preferences, he answered, "I have a very sure-footed sense of what I like, and exactly how much I like it. Give me two listenings of a song, and I can tell you exactly how it sits with me, and...I know my musical taste. I know my ears, I know what I respond to."

Garfunkel has been arrested twice for the possession of cannabis: once in early 2004 and again in August 2005.

Garfunkel is the brother of Jerome Garfunkel, the former member of the American (ANSI) and International (ISO) Committees who wrote the specification for the COBOL programming language. His older brother Jules B. Garfunkel was a United States Navy Veteran and financial analyst who died on September 17, 2006 in Sofia, Bulgaria.

Garfunkel is 6'0 (1.83 m), which is a large contrast to Paul Simon's 5'3 (1.60 m).