Barbara Ellen and Stuart Woods were married on April 7 aboard Enticer, a 1935, 85-foot Trumpy motor yacht, while cruising off Beaufort, South Carolina, thus combining ceremony and honeymoon.

Barbara Ellen is the daughter of Darlene Morrow Cole, of Bradenton, Florida and Louis Burzynski, of South Bend, Indiana, a firefighter, and the stepdaughter of the late John Mougin, a banker. She later shortened her name. She was born in South Bend, Indiana, studied theater at Stephens College with Jean Muir and earned a BS at Indiana University, majoring in dance. She also studied acting with Lee Strasberg in New York and was under contract with CBS-TV as an actress, appearing in the soap opera, Love of Life. She lectures in Feng Shui and is a painter (pictures, not houses). In her spare time she works with the homeless.

Barbara Ellen comes from a line of beauty queens, her grandmother and mother having preceded her as Miss Indiana, and she was first runner-up in the 1978 Miss America Pageant. Her mother was the national baton-twirling champion; Ms. Ellen, alas, was only the Indiana state champion. Genes can do only so much.
Stuart Woods is the son of Dorothy Callaway Lee Woods, a church organist, and Stuart Franklin Lee, an armed robber, ex-convict and filling station operator who later became a Los Angeles restaurateur and bookmaker. He was born Stuart Chevalier Lee in Manchester, Georgia (His name was later changed to that of his stepfather, Angier David Woods, a traveling salesman in ladies lingerie) and eked out a BA at the University of Georgia. Mr. Woods was an advertising writer in New York, London and Dublin, then established a career as a writer. He has written a memoir, a travel book and thirty-nine novels and has become a fixture on the New York Times Best-Seller List. He appears to have directed any inherited criminal tendencies into his books. He is published by George Putnam’s Sons and represented by Janklow & Nesbit.

Mr. Woods is a yachtsman and aviator and has lived an adventurous life. He sailed in the catastrophic Fastnet Race of 1979,when 15 lives were lost, and has twice sailed across the Atlantic, once alone. He has also twice flown a light aircraft across the Atlantic, once non-stop.

He is a member of the Century Association, the New York Yacht Club, the Royal Yacht Squadron and the Metropolitan Opera Club, so even given his genome, he seems to have turned out all right.

The couple first met 25 years ago at Elaine’s, the Upper East Side restaurant and literary/show business salon presided over by the redoubtable Elaine Kaufman since 1963. They renewed their acquaintance there six years ago, after Mr. Woods was divorced from a previous Mrs. Woods. They will live in Key West, Florida, Mt. Desert Island, Maine and in New York City, because, Mr. Woods says, he is always looking for 70 degrees Fahrenheit.

Stuart Woods says he is, “the same age as Robert Redford.” Barbara Ellen Woods would like it known that she is much, much younger than her husband.