Shortly after the opening of the latter, Merman—still despondent about the end of her affair with Stork Club owner Sherman Billingsley—married her first husband, Treacher's agent, William Smith. She later said she knew on their wedding night she had made "a dreadful mistake," and two months later, she filed for divorce on grounds of desertion. Shortly after she met and married Robert D. Levitt, promotion director for the "New York Journal-American". The couple eventually had two children and divorced in 1952 because of his excessive drinking and erratic behavior.