One Long Road Trip Stacy Ellen Anderson, Who Works For A New York Brokerage, And Mike Gminski, Who Plays For The 76ers, Have A Championship Commuter Marriage

NEW YORK — Modern marriage, Scene I: a drizzly Friday on Sixth Avenue, Smith Barney brokerage house, almost 6 p.m.

Vice president Stacy Ellen Anderson's last glance around her office lands on the picture of her husband, Mike Gminski, which she uses as a bookmark for her executive planner. (Stacy, 5 feet, 8 inches, and Mike, 7 feet tall, 275 pounds, according to his wife - a mere 6-11, 260, according to his employer, the Philadelphia 76ers - are photographed lying down in pastels and tans and smiles, elbow-to-elbow, cheek-to-cheek.) The 28-year-old marketing executive sweeps out of her office - past the U.S. map dotted with green pins, past the stack of Wall Street Journals, past the "Women have to work twice as hard as men" coffee cup - and joins the rumbling sidewalk whoosh of gray-coated figures leaving Manhattan. Crossing to Seventh Avenue, Stacy, once an all- America swimmer, lifts one leather glove into the air to hail a taxi and gracefully rises up on one black-pump-clad toe. "The jump hook," she says, smiling. The move, on a different court, that earns her husband $700,000 a year.

Stacy is running late for a 7:30 date with Mike in Philadelphia. Her jump

hook isn't hitting anything on Seventh Avenue. Husband and wife live in different cities now, but this is not a Modern Marriage Tale of Two Cities; it is the story of the grand prix of commuter marriages, a marriage motored by plane, train and taxi across the landscape of twenty-two cities. Stacy hardly sees her husband anymore. (Modern marriage flashback, to very early this morning: "I saw him when I left at 6:55 to catch the train, but he didn't see me.")

It's an unsettling time for Stacy and the G-Man, as hoop fans know her husband. In mid-January, Stacy says, the unthinkable happened: After eight years with the same company, Mike got transferred to Philadelphia. She still works in midtown Manhattan, where she holds a national marketing position with Smith Barney, Harris Upham & Co. Inc. He works in the Spectrum in South Philadelphia, where he holds the center position with the Sixers. She still lives in North Bergen, N.J.; he lives on City Avenue. "I live in New Jersey and visit Philadelphia," she says. "He lives in Philadelphia and visits New Jersey." It is a marriage routine made by the schedule-makers of the National Basketball Association.

This is not your usual NBA couple.