THE Norman Chandlers of Los Angeles this week join a rather select club. In the more than 2,100 issues of TIME, only 16 men and their wives have, until now, been separate cover subjects. With Buff Chandler's appearance this week, some seven years after her husband (July 15, 1957), they become the 17th set.

Most of the other cover couples were government leaders and their wives, such as George V of England and Queen Mary back in the '20s and '30s, or John F. Kennedy (who appeared seven times) and Jackie (Jan. 20, 1961). Among the few nongovernmental couples on the list are the notable names of John D. Rockefeller Jr. and his wife Abby Aldrich, and Albert Einstein and his wife Elsa, who was the subject of a cover story (Dec. 22, 1930) that told how she cared for her great but absent-minded husband. Other couples, such as Alfred Lunt and Lynn Fontanne (Nov. 8, 1937), have appeared on the cover together. And some show business people are somewhat hard to classify: for example, Ava Gardner was on the cover (Sept. 3, 1951) before she married Frank Sinatra, and he made his appearance (Aug. 29, 1955) after they were separated.

Both Norman and Buff Chandler were painted from life by Henry Koerner, who saw Buff as "a goddess hovering over the city" of Los Angeles. He posed her with a model of the new Los Angeles Music Center, used a rich blue cloth to hang in for the city's sky, and added his impressionistic view of Los Angeles at night from the window of his hotel room. When the portrait was nearly complete, Mr. Chandler took a look and found it a good likeness of Mrs. Chandler. Then, possibly thinking also of his own portrait, he told her in reassuring tones: "Henry, you know, never flatters." Returning the compliment, Painter Koerner, who generally finds men easier to deal with ("Women are more critical"), pronounced both the Chandlers good subjects.

Among the couples in the select TIME cover club, Norman and Buff Chandler are unique in the area of subject matter they represent. Norman Chandler was the subject of a story that turned around the part his Los Angeles Times played in the development of the city, while Mrs. Chandler is the central figure in a Modern Living story because of her great success as a leader in the cause of culture. She is eloquent on the subject. She told her story to Los Angeles Bureau Chief Marshall Berges in a series of conversations, ranging over four days, that ran to 15 hours on a tape recorder. Off that tape came a major part of a story analyzing the remarkable surge of interest and investment in culture that has spread all across the U.S.

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