Power: It’s Not Easy Being the Greens

Richard met Marla Meltzer, a street-smart Mount Airy native seven years his junior, at Élan, the nightclub at the Warwick Hotel, in 1985. Although they seemed an unlikely couple — he a wealthy, larger-than-life Wharton graduate, she a petite, middle-class Textiles grad who owned a bridal boutique — she charmed the bank scion and his family almost instantly.

The two married in 1987, at a critical moment in Green history. The family had controlled First Federal Savings & Loan, Pennsylvania’s first federally chartered S&L, since Richard’s grandfather Samuel, a legendarily thrifty immigrant who wrote letters on the backs of used stationery, had founded it during the Depression. By the early ’80s, it was the state’s most profitable S&L. But because savings & loans are by definition owned by their depositors, the family was merely comfortable. Richard’s father, Daniel Green, changed all that. In a deal Fortune marked with a story called “How to Steal an S&L — Legally,” he converted the S&L to a mutual, took it public, then managed to buy 98 percent of the bank’s shares with $1 million of his own money. The remaining money — more than $100 million — was borrowed, to be repaid with the bank’s earnings.

It was clear that the Greens would no longer be reusing stationery. In 1997, Richard and Marla bought seven acres in Bryn Mawr from developer Arnold Galman (whose mall-sized, perpetually unfinished megamansion is next door). In Montgomery County court in June, Marla testified that the house they built there is now worth about $14 million. It is the sort of place where two people could live simultaneously without ever seeing each other.

But by most accounts, Richard and Marla were happy. In a 2003 society picture from a Laurel House benefit, Richard is behind Marla, hoisting her up and squeezing her, with a broad smile. That same year, a prominent local banker remembers the couple still seeming very publicly in love. At an event at the Kimmel Center, a visibly nervous Marla was supposed to give a speech honoring Sidney Kimmel; Richard was remarkably, lovingly supportive of his wife in front of the large crowd. “Richard gets up to introduce her,” the banker says, “and I sort of thought, ‘Wow, they kind of have everything.’”