Marvin Guberman: Restaurateur, Dewey Beach alderman

It’s been more than a month since Suzi Guberman’s husband Marvin died and she still can’t bring herself to move an old pillow and blanket off the couch in the couple’s Rehoboth home.

“Marvin loved lying out there,” she said, teary-eyed, during an Oct. 1 interview. “I just can’t make myself do it.”

Marvin Guberman, a popular Cape Region restaurateur and Dewey Beach alderman for two decades, died Aug. 24 at the age of 85.

Marvin was born in Wilmington and was a graduate of University of Delaware. He practiced law in Miami until 1976 after getting a law degree from the University of Miami.

In 1977, Marvin was a recently divorced father of three when he opened the first of two restaurants in Miami, Mr. Benebe. In 1979 he opened an Italian eatery called Buccione in 1979. It was at Mr. Benebe that he met Suzi.

“I lived up the street,” she said, laughing as she thought back to the day she applied for a job. “The day we met he said, ‘This is going to be convenient.’”

The couple moved to Rehoboth Beach from Miami in 1981. It was the heyday of drug crime in the Florida city, and Suzi said Marvin thought it would be a good idea to move.

Within five years the pair had opened two Rehoboth Avenue restaurants: In 1981, they opened the Lone Star Cafe, in what is now Conch Island Key West Bar and Grill, and then Marvin's Restaurant, in what is now Rigby’s Bar & Grill, in 1985.

In 1989, the couple opened the Dewey Beach Club, in what is now Port.

In the restaurants, he was the personality, said Suzi.

“I was in the kitchen,” she said. “Everybody came to see Marvin.”

Marvin served as Dewey Beach alderman from 1988 to 2010. He became an alderman, said Suzi, because he never really lost the love of the law.

She said she didn’t talk about his experiences too much, like any good judge, but, she said, he was known to say, “I have three daughters; crying won’t do you any good,” to upset girls looking for leniency.

As charismatic as Marvin was in public, he enjoyed a peaceful existence at home.

There’s a sign hanging in the couple’s home that reads, “A man has the right to be let alone.” Suzi said Marvin had the sign in his Miami home when they first started dating. She said Marvin loved the solitude of their second home in the Shenandoah Valley of Virginia because it was out in the middle of nowhere.

“I couldn’t do it, because I’m a go, go, go person,” she said of spending too much time at the home, “but he could spend weeks at a time out there.”

Suzi said Marvin was an independent person until the very end of his life. She told a story about how, at 80 years old with only the couple’s toy poodle Buddy to keep him company, Marvin got stuck in the couple's Shenandoah Valley home during back-to-back snowstorms in 2010 that dropped 30 inches of snow.

Suzi was in Rehoboth. She said he was telling her that he would be fine.

“I was like, ‘If you don’t have heat you won’t be fine,’” she said. In the end, he had to be rescued by the National Guard.

More recently, Marvin would make daily trips to the Rehoboth Beach Post Office.

“He would go every day,” said Suzi. “It was a social thing.”

Marvin also loved the weather, Suzi said.

When an addition was built onto their home, Marvin had a tin roof put on so he could hear the rain, said Suzi. When it rained, she said, he would open all the windows on the porch, lay on the aformentioned couch and listen.

The nor’easter-like storm that recently soaked the entire Mid-Atlantic region had just begun the morning of the interview and Hurricane Joaquin’s path was still uncertain. The thought of all the rain and how Marvin would have enjoyed the view of the Lewes-Rehoboth Canal from his porch brought a smile and a laugh to Suzi’s face.

“He would have said, ‘This is my type of weather,’” she said. “He loved the rain.”