Five Years Later: Dan Barry Revisits a New York Couple’s Pandemic Diary, published in The New York Times, originally by Dan Barry and Julie Albanese in March 2020.
In March 2020, as the world faced the unknown effects of the Covid-19 pandemic and its transmission leading to quarantine in affected regions, writer Dan Barry and photographer Julie Albanese launched a new column, chronicling the daily lives of everyday people under lockdown through their stories. This novel form of journalism known as a diary column, gained a significant following and was one of The New York Times’ most-read story formats. Among those whose story they shared, were the Servantes, a long-time Manhattan couple, giving us a glimpse into how their days, and sometimes nights, would have proceeded during the initial pandemic disturbance in March 2020.
Barry returns now with the Servantes, five years on, to see how their pandemic lives compare to what they are experiencing today. Margie, 52 at the time, a Pennsylvania native in the marketing world of NYC, and Bob, 68, with an extensive background in the hospitality sector, gave Barry and Albanese a different perspective of life in New York at the time.
For Week in Review, Barry, who works as The Times’ story design and illustration co-leader, catches up with the Servantes, discussing their family, their new roles at work, life post-Covid, and how this time around feels different from last time.
The Servantes, last we heard from them, were ignoring the news, reveling in more extended Facetime calls with their kids — he is a pension consultant, and she is a director of business development and strategic alliances in the industry of marketing, data and technology. Their combined perspective offers one of the quietest, steadiest, most refreshing voices we’ve heard through this column this past year.
Barry caught up with Margie and Bob recently, and they generously agreed to look back and forward: to see what happens to one couple in the City, five years after an early moment in the pandemic, and five years into a post-pandemic evolution that is by turns arresting, excruciating and exhilarating.
Margie: I chose to retire early, two years ago, and now I dabble in work — lots of little things, really. I edit freelance copy for clients, mostly through word of mouth. I do consulting work with smaller companies. And I’ve taken on a raft of outside professional organization and advisory roles. I use the phrase “useful citizen” — you can look it up.
Bob: My other lifelong passion is food. My particular contribution to our health has been to become a chef. We cook nightly consumption meals for our children and grandchildren, and we ship those meals to our Jersey Shore home for the kids to enjoy during the week. We cook because my son, Nick, is diabetic, and Matt, his brother, can’t or won’t or is unable to cook. And because we like to cook.
Margie: I’m a fortunate one. Hello, spring! I just came inside from the courtyard in the sunshine surrounded by flowering trees, early tulips, and elements of collage banners sculpted by a busy-bee architectural design company — because we do pay attention to the news sometimes. We live in the Financial District of Manhattan, not in Erewhon but comparably in bas relief.
Bob: With NYC schools and offices beginning to reopen intermittently, tons of new people are already pouring back into the City. Our tunnel vision has lifted, at least a little.
Margie: It’s definitely different this time — and I sometimes feel like we’ve been furloughed from time itself. Unlike early 2020, I do check the news. I read The Times a lot. I type our Grand Central neighborhood complexity into my Google Maps app, and it shows me what I want to see: seething clusters of umbrellas and carrier bags and emergency vehicles and people — and then I switch screens to deliveries of candy, coupons for postmodern “beverages” (our disdainful term), books, Face masks, priority mailings, name-your-poop-scoop-ready bedding. And I feel conspiratorial and amazed and grateful for the evolution of why (and how) we’re proceeding.
Bob: The pandemic gave Mom and me long hours to reflect on life and experience — how a life unfolds is painful harder to rewrite than how one sees the road ahead. Or side, or back. We are our own ideological and emotional helicopter pilots. I would like to find a tradition or set of rules that I could study to guide me through a fork in the road — but there aren’t many such guides.
Margie: Bob and I like to make stuff happen. We light small fires.
Bob: We also like to receive love and praise and recognition from good people who know us as role models.
What’s the difference for the Servantes between their pandemic experience in 2020 and now, according to the article by writer Dan Barry and photographer Julie Albanese, published in The New York Times in March 2025? How do their lives compare to what they experience today? Are there any significant changes in their roles at work or their familial circumstances that have impacted them?
Leave a Reply