At home with Vanity and her new husband

Ebony, June, 1995 by Aldore Collier

On her first anniversary of sobriety from the hellish world of cocaine addiction, Vanity married Anthony Smith, a defensive end with the Los Angeles Raiders, and moved to a Cinderella-like home in the Los Angeles hills.

What made the union especially noteworthy was that the football star and the born-again evangelist married four weeks after laying eyes on each other for the first time. In fact, Vanity, who now uses her real name of Denise Matthews, proposed to Smith three days after meeting him.

Matthews, 36, was doing her work as an evangelist in San Jose, Calif., when she read reports of Smith's philanthropic activities in inner-city Los Angeles. "The Lord told me that I would go down to L.A. and minister to him," she recalls. "I didn't really know what he looked like. I was thinking, `Oh, Lord, is this my husband? I don't even know this man.' When I arrived at his door, he had this huge smile on kids face and I was whipped right there."

The two say they were immediately attracted to each other and began a courtship that could have put the `w' in the word whirlwind. "I knew this man was made for me the first day," she reveals. "It wasn't just that he was a nice guy. He's very-sensitive. A teddy bear."

Smith, 10 years his wife's junior, says he was as surprised as everyone else when they decided to many. "Never in a million years did I think I'd be married a month after meeting somebody," he says. "We met on the premise of doing charity work together. I had a girlfriend. But when I met Denise, it was like, `Wow!' I had to prove to her that she was all I needed. I had to let everything in my life go. I put my shield down and said: 'If she's gonna hurt me, she's gonna hurt me. If it's gonna happen, it's gonna happen.'"

The wedding and reception took place at Smith's elegant, almost 6,000-square-foot home in the Playa del Rey section of L.A. on a hill near the Pacific Ocean. It is a home that Smith has lived in for little more than a year and one he has been slowly, meticulously furnishing.

Smith let his living room remain empty for seven months while he searched all over L.A. for just the right sofa and accessories to make it nice and comfortable. "When you walk into my home," Smith says, "if you can say, `Hey, this guy's a football player,' then you're in the wrong place.' I carefully picked out pieces I thought were unique. If they didn't quite match, it was okay. I'm really into detail. People look at a well-dressed man and they think he looks sharp. Well, he is sharp because he has made sure that he has cuff links, tie, watch and ring on a certain way. Accessories make it. Accessories make a room. Anybody can throw a couch into a room."

Smith proudly admits that he furnished the house without an interior decorator. He had tried some decorators, but their tastes clashed. One of the things visitors quickly notice about the home is that it is full of surrealistic art by Salvador Dali and Michael Parks. "Surrealism is based on a man's thought processes, based on dreams," he explains.

Denise accepts his taste in home furnishings but says that in time she will definitely add her personal touch here and there. Right now, she is still adjusting to her role of wife. She prays daily to be a good wife, she says, and prays extra hard to be something she never ever thought she could be--submissive.

"My best friend, Roxanne Harper [her maid of honor], told me, `Denise, one day you're going to have to learn how to submit to a man. You're going to have to be able to.' And I was thinking, 'I don't know about that. That is not me!' And then I began to pray to the Lord. The Lord shows you how ugly it is not to be submissive," the former entertainer says.

And Anthony, who was so accustomed to the bachelor life, is still slowly adjusting to sharing space. "I'm always thinking, `My house.' No, no. Now, this is our house! It's tough to get used to that," the athlete says. `I've never had to deal with `our shirt' and our this.' She wears my clothes more than I wear my own. I can't hop into anything of hers. But it's awesome. In the first week after we were married, we didn't leave the house. We didn't even think about going out to eat. We laugh and joke and read to each other. Both of us cook. Denise is a gourmet cook."

The two say they argue about 10 times a day, but never go to bed mad at each other. The major source of their disagreement, they say, is the freedom with which Denise gives herself to others. She has a knack of inviting the homeless to her home, feeding and clothing them. She admits that she has given her phone number out to quite a few of them.

"I worry about her," he says. "She's doing so many things to try and help. But if I don't watch, out she will even hand out the furniture in our house. She is constantly giving out her number and offering meals and showers to people. I hurt her feelings when I tell her she can't do things like that. I fear for her life and her health."

Denise quickly shakes her head and interjects that she has absolutely nothing to fear. "You know, if I've got the Lord in my life and the Lord is protecting me, what should I fear?" she says. Her husband simply nods his head and smiles.