"I met her when she was about 21 years old," Lowenberg recalls. "And fell head-over-heels in love with her—except for her upper front teeth were a little too bucked. And because they were a little bucked, she had a protrusion in her upper lip that was sort of reminiscent of Diana Ross—I used to think of her as a white Diana Ross. I didn't know her well enough to say anything, but every time I was with her, I couldn't take my eyes off those teeth. I wanted to make them straight."

It didn't help matters, says Lowenberg, that one of his school chums was egging him on. "She's very pretty," the fellow dentist-in-training would say, "but you've got to fix those teeth."

"So after we married, and I was feeling pretty secure in the relationship, I started driving her crazy about going to an orthodontist. And after a long time, she gave in and got classic wire braces in her 30s. Her teeth were made textbook perfect."

And then what?

"Her sex appeal vanished," Lowenberg exclaims. "That puffy upper lip totally disappeared. And it made me so insane—and so guilt-ridden that I had talked her into it—that I made the orthodontist put her teeth back to where they'd been before."