Edition: U.S. / Global

PUBLIC LIVES; Felder's Partner, and Wife, Keeps Her Own Counsel

Published: May 25, 2001

IT'S been almost 10 years since Myrna Felder's husband and law partner, Raoul, he of the devilish goatee and sinful sound bite, went on a redecorating binge that involved scraping Mrs. Felder's name off their office door at 437 Madison Avenue. Call it whimsical, call it self-aggrandizing, but Mr. Felder's name is flanked by those of a pair of mythic, iconic American gumshoes, Philip Marlowe and Sam Spade, and Mrs. Felder's is nowhere to be found.

It's not a slight that keeps her up at night.

''Maybe if it had happened when I was younger, it might have caused distress, but by 1993, I had made my own name in the legal firmament,'' says Mrs. Felder, 60, a former Broadway hoofer who married Mr. Felder in 1963 when she was 21 and tapping in the Hal Linden version of ''Anything Goes.'' It was a divorce of sorts -- hers from a business manager who she says was not getting her any work -- that brought them together. Mr. Felder, a fledgling prosecutor who was dating another cast member when they were introduced, helped extricate her from the contract, and in the course of litigation, they fell in love.

''My mother always said, 'Myrna, that was the best $650 you ever spent,' '' she chirps.

Petite and matronly in her navy bouclé Chanel suit, her brown hair cut in an unprepossessing pixie, an expensive Buccellati bug, a present from her husband, pinned to her jacket, Mrs. Felder isn't bothered by being cast as the wallflower in a dispute-free -- according to them -- marriage that turns 38 this weekend. ''My husband claims the reason we've never had an argument is because he always backs down, but you can't,'' she says with a wink, ''believe everything he says.''

A dynamo in her day (her career began in fifth grade when she ventured to the NBC studios in Manhattan on Sunday mornings to perform on ''The Horn and Hardart Children's Hour''), she apparently left her ego back in her first career, deferring to her husband's in the second. But she'll always have Broadway. ''My husband was a real-life stage door Johnny, and look how it all turned about,'' she says. ''Because back then all the applause was mine, and he was this very serious doer, and the limelight was on me: it's probably because I had plenty of it that I'm comfortable with the way things are now. Been there, done that.'' About being nameless on the front door? ''If he enjoys it, let him have it.'' Must be why the Picasso hangs above the fireplace in his office while she has the tongue-in-cheek movie posters (''My Favorite Wife,'' ''The Silent Partner'') in hers. The ''Sometimes the best man for the job is a woman'' pillow is a gift from hubby. ''See,'' she says, ''there's hope for him yet.''

BUT it's Mrs. Felder who has to reschedule this interview three times in one afternoon to accommodate a top-priority huddle with Mr. Felder and his famous friend/client, Mayor Rudolph W. Giuliani. Mrs. Felder, judged an appellate whiz by peers in the matrimonial bar (Mr. Felder equates working on appeals with ''two weeks in purgatory, but she's good at it; disciplined, analytical, smart, and nicer than me''), is the brains behind the motions now in progress in the Giuliani-Hanover divorce.

As for Mr. Felder's public denigration of Donna Hanover on Mother's Day weekend, she traces it to the other side's retraction of an order-of-silence agreement: ''I don't think he was belittling women, he was belittling the spouse of a client.'' She insists, with moist eyes, that she doesn't really listen to Mr. Felder's more ''outrageous'' (her word) outbursts. They only work together on complicated cases like this one.

''The legal issues are complex, it's a unique set of facts,'' says Mrs. Felder, whose efforts are aimed at reimposing an order of silence and overturning the ruling by Acting Justice Judith J. Gische of State Supreme Court in Manhattan that bars the mayor's friend Judith Nathan from Gracie Mansion. Mrs. Felder contends that a portion of the house constitutes ''a public place. And the gag order, that's a whole, evolving area of the law. For the practitioner, it's fascinating.'' For the record, she believes no case involving children should be open to the media.

So, divorce doesn't depress her? ''It gets me exhausted and drained, but not depressed; it's a wonderful area of the law to be in.'' She says constant exposure to warring couples has made for a zone of civility in her marriage: ''We see such cruelty and stress in other people's lives; it's very peaceful in our house, but we're not joined at the hip.'' She travels, he doesn't; he hangs with Jackie Mason, she hangs at the Joffrey school. Their home is a Sutton Place triplex: he decorated the 18th floor (English club style), she did the 19th and 20th (English country).

Mrs. Felder was born in Brooklyn, raised in Queens; her mother, a Russian orphan, quit her job at Pittsburgh's Fox Film Corporation to marry her father, a jeweler. She entered Brown at 16, graduated Phi Beta Kappa in 1961, and made a beeline back into show business: though just 5 feet tall, she was a Broadway chorine in ''Stop the World -- I Want to Get Off'' and ''The Roar of the Greasepaint, the Smell of the Crowd.'' She quit dancing during the first of her pregnancies (she has two children, one granddaughter), and at Mr. Felder's suggestion, and on his dime, she got a law degree from New York University in 1971.

''He told my parents, 'I'm getting Myrna the best life insurance policy she can have.' And he was right.''

Photo: MYRNA FELDER (Barbara Alper for The New York Times)