There are few marriages in New Jersey more complicated.
Robert Menendez was at the pinnacle of power in the U.S. Senate when he and his girlfriend, Nadine Tabourian Arslanian, wed after a whirlwind romance. Three years later, their overheard terms of endearment — “What else can the love of my life do for you?” — would become damning evidence supporting explosive bribery charges against Mr. Menendez, a longtime Democratic power broker, and his new wife.
In court, each blamed the other. Both were convicted. He began serving an 11-year sentence in June; she is expected to report to prison this summer after undergoing breast cancer surgery.
But in the five months that Mr. Menendez, 71, has been in prison, the couple has been barred by the U.S. Bureau of Prisons from seeing each other, even though the federal judge who sentenced them and the prosecutors who tried the case have said they have no objection to such visits.
In September, after the judge, Sidney H. Stein, sentenced Ms. Menendez to four and a half years in prison, he appeared taken aback when told that she had been blocked from visiting her husband. He went out of his way to include a recommendation to the prison bureau in Ms. Menendez’s official criminal judgment, noting that “the court has no objection to Nadine Menendez visiting her husband at the correctional facility where he may be held.”
The prison has denied several of Mr. Menendez’s written requests for his wife to visit on weekends and holidays, Ms. Menendez and her lawyer, Sarah Krissoff, said. Other family members have been allowed to visit, Ms. Menendez said.
“It’s only me,” she said in her first interview since being sentenced. “Even friends, regular friends, have gone.”
Mr. Menendez’s prison term is the longest sentence ever issued to a U.S. senator. Ms. Menendez, 58, said their enforced separation — during what are likely to be her final months of freedom for several years — felt like a vindictive, and unnecessary, additional penalty.
“People left and right, everybody — my closest friends — tell me how stupid I am and I should leave him,” Ms. Menendez said.
“But I love my husband,” she said, “and I am not leaving him for anything.”
Jurors were told that greed and Ms. Menendez’s dire finances had led the couple to trade the former senator’s political clout for gold, cash and a Mercedes-Benz, even as questions over who had crafted the audacious, yearslong plot that involved the government of Egypt went largely unanswered.
What was never in dispute, however, was the couple’s bond.
Trial evidence included text messages laden with heart emojis and affectionate pet names, usually written in French. “Laundry is done mon amour,” Ms. Menendez wrote in March 2019, months before the two got engaged in India, outside the Taj Mahal.
The prison system’s refusal to let Ms. Menendez visit her husband appears to be connected to her status as a co-defendant in the bribery case, Ms. Krissoff told Judge Stein in court in September.
Two months later, a spokesman for the U.S. attorney’s office for the Southern District of New York said that prosecutors still had no objection to Ms. Menendez’s visiting her husband in prison.
But Ms. Krissoff said she had been unable to obtain permission even for a single visit to allow the couple to discuss Ms. Menendez’s medical care in person, rather than in a recorded telephone call. “There are complicated decisions about the course of care going forward that she doesn’t want to make by herself,” Ms. Krissoff said.
“We all have problems that can’t be fixed, that we deal with every day,” she added. “This is a fixable problem, and they could fix it.”
An official at Allenwood Federal Correctional Institution, the low-security men’s lockup in Pennsylvania where Mr. Menendez is serving his time, said in an email that the prison was unable to answer questions because of “privacy, safety and security reasons.”
At the bureau’s headquarters in Washington, a spokesman, Emery Nelson, offered a similar response and directed a reporter to the agency’s regulations, which note that visits by family members are permitted “absent strong circumstances that preclude visiting.”
“The existence of a criminal conviction alone does not preclude visits,” the regulations state. “Staff shall give consideration to the nature, extent and recentness of convictions, as weighed against the security considerations of the institution.”
Speaking generally, Mr. Nelson said in an email that special approval by the warden “may be required” before such visits. Detainees have the option to appeal through the bureau’s Administrative Remedy Program, he noted.
Ms. Menendez was convicted of shuttling messages and bribes between her husband and several New Jersey businessmen who were seeking political favors. In the interview, she acknowledged that her husband’s willingness to allow his lawyers to depict her as desperate, broke and on the take was a painful moment in their marriage.
“How could you say this? How could you blame me for this when you know 100 percent it’s not me?” she said, recounting her anger.
“I was very, very hurt,” she added.
In August, before Ms. Menendez’s sentencing, Mr. Menendez admitted regret about that characterization in a letter to Judge Stein. “To suggest that Nadine was money hungry or in financial need, and therefore would solicit others for help, is simply wrong,” he wrote.
Then, the next month, she turned the tables. In a stunning courtroom statement before being sentenced, Ms. Menendez told the judge that her husband had treated her “like a puppet” and was “not the man I thought he was.”
Mr. Menendez has appealed his conviction, and Ms. Menendez plans to file her own appeal in January.
“They have a lot still to fight for, and to fight together for, frankly,” Ms. Krissoff said, noting what she called “formidable” appeal arguments.
The couple now exchange letters and talk regularly in brief, recorded calls.
Ms. Menendez said that memories of small moments shared in happier times continue to sustain her. She recalled a conversation they recently had about her constantly chilled feet.
“He goes, ‘I never, ever thought I would say I am looking forward to the night where your cold, freezing feet wake me up because you say I’m warm.’”
“Something like that, it makes me laugh,” she added. “It gives me hope.”
Tracey Tully is a reporter for The Times who covers New Jersey, where she has lived for more than 20 years.
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