Meat of the Matter

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In New York’s wholesale meat markets, Marilyn Forman Spiera ’59 was a familiar figure. Dressed in a white butcher’s coat with a meat marker in hand, she would parse through hanging beef carcasses to handpick the best cuts for her family’s legendary Williamsburg-based steakhouse, Peter Luger. In keeping with the Forman family tradition, she branded the meat with Peter Luger’s custom stamp once she made her selection — much like her late mother, Marsha Forman, who was tasked with the job when her husband, Sol Forman, bought the eatery at an auction in 1950.

Marsha Forman spent two years learning how to select the finest beef from a retired USDA grader. She’d later teach her daughters Marilyn Forman Spiera, who passed away at age 85 this past December, and Amy Forman Rubenstein ’60, who still goes to the market every week to make selections for the restaurant.

“Peter Luger Steak House owes much of its success to the women who have run it,” says Marilyn’s daughter, Jody Spiera Storch ’92, who notes that in the male-dominated industry, the “fearless,” “opinionated,” and “quick-witted” Marilyn “earned everybody’s respect by virtue of her grit, her knowledge, and her overriding sense of compassion for all.”

According to Storch, her mother and aunt served at the helm of Peter Luger for more than five decades. Marilyn woke up at 5 a.m. every weekday to handle scheduling and didn’t rest until sales figures came in for the night. Weekends provided a welcome moment of respite. “She loved a beer and a cigar after dinner, and Ring Dings, always,” says Marilyn’s sister, Elissa Forman Cullman ’68, who works in interior design.

Managing the famed restaurant was just one of the professional hats Marilyn wore. She also oversaw the medical practice of her late husband, Harry Spiera, an internationally recognized rheumatologist, and she was known to do “intense research” before every business decision.

“Setting out to purchase an X-ray machine for her husband’s office, she studied the various options so carefully that the salesman was cowed, concluding that she knew more about the machines than he did!” recalls Cullman. She adds that her sister’s education at Barnard as an economics major likely played a role in her well-rounded know-how. She graduated with departmental honors and strongly encouraged Storch and her sister Penny Forman Turtel ’82 — and niece Roni Rubenstein ’82 — to attend. (Marilyn’s cousins Ronnie Kaye ’64 and Jane Sloyer ’70 cheered them on as well.)

Despite her strong work ethic, business wasn’t Marilyn’s main priority. After her parents retired from running the restaurant, she cared for them in their senior years in Brooklyn. (Marsha Forman passed away in 1998, and Sol Forman died three years later.) Family was always at the center of everything her sister did, says Cullman, even when she didn’t intend it to be.

“One of my special memories relates to how Marilyn loved to fix single people up,” Cullman recalls. “She would make lists of potentials and then introduce her candidates. Driving to the office one day, she thought she had the very best idea, but after parking her car, she realized she was thinking of … a brother and sister! That situation always made her chuckle.”

The mother of three also made it her duty to end every busy work week with a family dinner, which included multiple generations of Formans.

“The extended family would get together, and the location would rotate at either my parents’, my aunt’s, or my grandparents’,” says Storch. “We continue this tradition to this day, and we are so lucky to see the family grow and continue to be so close.” 

Photo by Michael Berman