St. Petersburg Times; St. Petersburg, Fla.; Feb 14, 2003; MIKE BRASSFIELD;

    Tonight, Cheryl Popp will savor a steak dinner with her one and only valentine, her eighth husband.
    Just a few miles away, John Susor will celebrate Valentine's Day by roasting hot dogs with his ninth wife.
    There are a surprising number of people like them in the Tampa Bay area: people who fall in love over and over again. People who can't help taking the plunge one more time. People who get married more often than Elizabeth Taylor.
    No less than 76 people in Pinellas and Hillsborough counties have been married at least eight times, according to a review of computerized marriage license records. It's hard to tell who the most-married people are because the computer databases stop counting after eight.
    The Times contacted many of these prolific marriers. Most wouldn't talk. Those who did are a mix of hopeless romantics and hardened realists.
    Some have split up with their latest spouse and are looking for love yet again. Others have been happily married to their eighth or ninth spouse for a decade. "This one's working. Divorce doesn't enter my mind anymore when I'm with him," said Popp, a 56-year-old St. Petersburg telemarketer who married her eighth husband, electrician Lou Popp, in 1999.
    Her first marriage, at age 19, lasted 10 years. It was followed by a series of increasingly short marriages, two to the same man.
    "I was picking the wrong guys. I was afraid to get hurt again," she said. "Lou and I have the same temperament. He understands when I explode, and I deal with it when he explodes."
Many of these well-traveled husbands and wives are grandparents who tell similar stories about lengthy first marriages followed by strings of doomed quickie marriages.
    Susor had been married eight times over five decades and wasn't looking to do it again. Then Jutta Rosborough walked into his beachside bar. One thing led to another.
    "The decision to get married wasn't mine, but it's fine. I think an awful lot of her," said Susor, a cantankerous 83-year-old Ernest Hemingway lookalike and political gadfly. His colorful Indian Shores bistro, Mahuffer's, doubles as his home. Wife No. 9 moved in and maintains the bar's elaborate Web site.
    "We have our problems, same as anybody else," Susor said. "I don't expect everything to be perfect. I'm happy with her."
    Fifty years ago, the U.S. divorce rate was about 20 percent. Now it's about 50 percent. Statistics show the second, third, or even eighth marriage is no more likely to succeed. But that doesn't stop people from trying.
    St. Petersburg truck driver Rick Grundstrom, 47, met his second wife, Dee, 46, at the old Joyland country music bar in Pinellas Park. He found out she'd been married seven times.
    "It didn't really matter," said Rick, who happily became husband number eight. They've been together 10 years now.
    One other thing: Among the ranks of the many-married, you'll find plenty of people who have wed the same spouse more than once.
    In Hillsborough County, 78-year-old Harry Goff has gotten hitched nine times. He has married two different women twice.
    He met his current wife, Pam, 52, in a Tampa trailer park where they both lived. He married and divorced her, then remarried her in 1993 in a bar called the Beer Shack.
    "We drank a lot at that time, but we quit drinking," Goff said. "We love each other. We found out we can't get along without each other."
    Marrying the same person again doesn't always work out. Ask Diann Woodbury, 55, another St. Petersburg telemarketer. She married William Woodbury, 45, four times. "I was gullible," said Diann Woodbury, who has been married eight times.
    Richard Greer, 47, of Dunedin, married Valerie Snider, 48, on Valentine's Day 1996. It was his first marriage and her eighth.
    "I found that out a week before we got married. I thought it would go okay, but she left after six months," Greer said. "I thought Elizabeth Taylor had the record, but I guess not."
    For the record, Elizabeth Taylor, now 70, has had eight marriages to seven husbands. She is now single.