For Her 70th Birthday, She Hired an Escort

Modern Love

The New York Times

Storytelling, Nytimes, Nyt, Redemption, New York Times, Society & Culture, Loss, Essay, Love

4.3 • 9K Ratings

🗓️ 1 October 2025

⏱️ 37 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

Gail Rice, a writer and a therapist, was approaching her 70th birthday. She had given up on dating apps and hadn’t had a romantic connection with anyone in years. But for her 70th, she wanted a very specific birthday present: an orgasm. So Rice decided to hire an escort. In this episode, she describes what went right, what went wrong and what she’s planning for her next birthday. You can read Gail Rice’s essay about hiring an escort in the newsletter “Oldster.” Here’s how to submit a Modern Love essay to The New York Times. Here’s how to submit a Tiny Love Story. The Modern Love column is looking for “breakup lines.” If you have a memorable story about what you said when you were breaking up with someone, or what someone said to you, you can share it here. The deadline is Sunday, Oct. 5.

Transcript

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0:00.0	Hey everyone, it's Anna. I'm just popping in at the top of this episode to make sure you know about some special stuff that's only available to New York Times subscribers. As you know, hopefully by now, every Wednesday we publish a new episode of Modern Love that anyone can listen to from anywhere. And we're going to keep doing that. But only subscribers have access to the bonus content we publish
0:22.1	on Fridays. Every Friday, you can start your weekend by listening to the latest Modern Love
0:26.9	column read aloud. Subscribers also have access to the full back catalog of Modern Love
0:31.7	episodes. If you're not already a subscriber, we hope you'll consider becoming one. Not just to get
0:37.2	access to more modern
0:38.1	love, but as a way of supporting the journalism that powers the whole New York Times newsroom.
0:43.7	To learn more, you can go to n.witimes.com slash podcasts. Or you can subscribe directly from
0:50.3	Apple Podcasts or Spotify. Okay, here's the show.
0:54.5	As always, thanks for listening.
0:59.0	Love now and...
1:00.5	Love was stronger than anything.
1:04.5	And I love you more than anything.
1:08.6	There's to love.
1:09.3	Love.
1:11.0	From the New York Times, I'm Anna Martin.
1:13.2	This is Modern Love.
1:14.5	Today I'm talking to writer and therapist, Gail Rice.
1:18.6	When Gail was about to turn 70,
1:20.0	she realized what she really wanted for her 70th birthday was an orgasm.
1:25.2	So she decided to hire an escort.
1:30.5	And when I heard about this, I had approximately a million questions for Gail, which she was kind enough to answer for me in detail. But look,
1:36.4	knowing what she wanted was one thing, figuring out how to get it was another. We talked all about it.
	...

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