"Eight years ago, Gloria Steinem confessed in a memoir that, in her fifties, she had flnally found the nesting instinct: She decorated her New York apartment. Got a bed with a canopy, covered in white lace! Realized that the oven in her apartment hadn't worked for ages, and did something about it.

It was a radical change for a radical feminist who had spent her life living out of suitcases and projecting all that is not domestic, not home-oriented, not tied down.

Sunday, she got married.

Yes, we're talking about that social convention that Steinem long treated with such contempt ('You became a semi-nonperson when you got married,' she once said.) that it was easy to believe that she saw it as nothing more than a feudal property contract. Something to be abolished. Dismissed. And avoided at all costs.

Then she hit her sixties. Then she met a guy named David Bale, who liked her political causes and, according to a friend who has met him, is very nice and makes Steinem very happy. Then she turned around and stunned every one - including, apparently, herself - by taking her vows at the Oklahoma home of her pal Wilma Mankiller. With those pesky words like 'husband,' 'wife' and 'obey' eliminated from the ceremony, of course.

The bride, 66 years old, wore blue jeans. The groom is a younger man - 61 - who is described as a South African-born anti-apartheid activist who also happened to introduce the skateboard to England. Mankiller, the former head of the Cherokee Nation, hosted the event which had elements of both a civil and a Cherokee ceremony. Her husband, Charlie Soap, presided over the event along with Oklahoma Judge Sandy Crosslin.

According to a news release issued by her publicist, Steinem and Bale met in October 1999 in Los Angeles at a benefit for Voters for Choice, Steinem's political action committee. Bale lives in Los Angeles and is the father of Christian Bale, the actor who starred most recently in 'American Psycho.'

The news stunned most folks.

'Though I've worked many years to make marriage more equal, I never expected to take advantage of it myself,' Steinem, who co-founded Ms. magazine, said in a statement. 'I'm happy, surprised, and someday will write about it, but for now I hope this proves what feminists have always said - that feminism is about the ability to choose what's right at each time of our lives.'

Feminists - like longtime activist Eleanor Smeal and author Susan Brownmiller - embraced that theory Tuesday, though they found it hard to address the issue without an initial burst of laughter.

'It's just wonderful that she's found romance and economic security,' deadpanned Brownmiller, after swallowing her giggles. 'Im just speculating, but those are the reasons you get married. Right?'

Smeal - who met Bale with Steinem at the Democratic convention in Los Angeles last month - said she was both surprised and 'delighted.'

'Of course, Gloria has - how would you say this? - Gloria has always been very active,' Smeal said. 'She's always had wonderful companionship. She's not been a wallflower. . . . But I have to admit, I am surprised.'

No one would ever use that old feminist stereotype, 'man hater,' to describe Steinem. Ever since her undercover days as a Playboy Bunny for a magazine article, the long-legged, blond-haired feminist has been a man magnet, almost never without a companion at her side.

'Half the men I ever knew who knew her were in love with her,' said longtime Cosmopolitan magazine editor Helen Gurley Brown, who acknowledged that Steinem 'didn't always approve of me. ... She's a very good-looking babe, and she was so awesomely brilliant, and that may have terrified a few men.'

Steinem most famously dated publishing executive Mort Zuckerman, and suffered through a round of vicious gossip when it was said erroneously, she has long insisted - that she consulted fertility specialists to prove that she could bear a child even though she was in her fifties at the time.

'She was always sort of desperately eager to get married, poor thing,' said Charlotte Hays, who once wrote for a New York Post gossip column. She is now with the conservative Independent Women's Forum and edits its magazine, Women's Quarterly. 'I think she just didn't lasso anybody until now.'

Most, though, think of Steinem as the ultimate single girl. Famous for coining the expression 'A wornan needs a man like a fish needs a bicycle,' Steinem dismissed marriage in 1987 as not having a 'good name.'

'Legally speaking,' she said, 'it was designed for a person and a half.

Brownmiller remembers something else: 'Her last statement on the matter [in a 1994 book, 'Moving Beyond Words'] was that she had gone into a period of celibacy.

Remember that?' she said.

But in recent years, Steinem has become less strident, even getting softer on the younger women who have riled older feminists by refusing to acknowledge their contributions or to accept the feminist label.

'The symbols that we rebelled against - such as high heels, pushup bras, taking a man's name after marriage, quitting work to raise children - now are freely chosen, or the context has changed,' Steinem told an audience at a Barnes & Noble bookstore in Berkeley, Calif., earlier this year. 'Young women feel different about these things because they're choosing them freely and, in fact, they're a form of rebellion in themselves. The core question is: Is this our choice?'

Brownmiller sees age as a key factor.

'I think that when you do get older, you look to what you have left and you look to how you want to spend that time,' Brownmiller said. 'It's kind of a neat decision that she's made.

'Gloria must have watched over the last several years as all these gays are getting married, lesbians are getting married. Really, there's no political reason not to get married anymore. Is this some sort of renegade position that she's taken? It isnt. She's following a trend in society today, people wanting to declare themselves in a partnership that has legal sanction.

Smeal's just thrilled that Steinem has snagged a younger man.

Strike one for womanhood!' she said." (Jennifer Frey, The Washington Post, September 7, 2000).