His first job was shoveling snow in the Bronx after a heavy blizzard that winter. In the 1950s, he held numerous jobs including working as a bow tie presser in a Brooklyn sweatshop, a traveling leather-bound, loose-leaf binder salesman and a furniture store manager. He met Naomi Sisselman, nine years his junior, and the two were married in 1954 with a celebration at Little Hungary Restaurant in NYC. The couple had three children over the course of their marriage: sons Ivan and Alan and daughter Sherry.
