Cohen worked at a holiday camp in Massachusetts while he was a student at Tufts.  While waiting tables, he courted Pearl Silverman, a bookish woman from New York.  The biochemist and author, Isaac Asimov, also vacationed there and became friends with Cohen.  Observing the romance, Asimov wrote songs about it for the camp show, "Poor Teds in bed. Hes lonely but well read";  the couple were later married and went on to have two children, Bret and Rima.
He died of chronic lymphocytic leukemia.