The Dan and Dave Show (Published 2010) (2024)

TWO wolves were eating at the Lion. Dan Abrams, NBC’s chief legal analyst and founder of the Mediaite Web site, was sharing a table at the boisterous Greenwich Village restaurant with Dave Zinczenko, editor of Men’s Health and author of the best-sellers “The Abs Diet” and “Eat This, Not That.” The men are active investors in the Lion, their first joint venture in a decade of friendship that tends to be characterized in the gossip pages as “bachelors in a bromance,” as Mr. Zinczenko, 40, put it, laughing.

“There are occasions when one of us will go out without the other,” said Mr. Abrams, who is 44. “And people will say, ‘Hey, where’s your buddy?’ I think sometimes people presume that when we’re out together, we’re looking to meet women. There’s been no question there have been times in our lives when he and I have gone out together and we’ve ended up meeting women. Dave and I took a trip to South Africa, and he ended up meeting his girlfriend there. When you spend this much time with someone, you end up getting involved in all aspects of each other’s lives.”

The two men’s romantic appetites have made them occasional targets of mockery, as retro wingmen on the loose. Mr. Zinczenko’s roughly three-year relationship with the actress Rose McGowan drove many of the city’s male magazine editors out of their minds. How did he — a schlump moving copy — get her, a girl who should be wearing a negligee in the pages of a magazine, not in its editor’s bed? (Perhaps they’d forgotten that Clay Felker, the New York magazine founder, married Pamela Tiffin, a cream-puff movie star.) Mr. Abrams, meanwhile, has reportedly dated Renée Zellweger and Elle Macpherson and, more recently, the actress Elisabeth Röhm.

And now they’re doing another brazen New York guy thing, joining a line of flush men, from Toots Shor to Robert De Niro to Vanity Fair’s Graydon Carter, who can’t resist owning a piece of a restaurant. It’s not a large world: the Lion’s star chef (and part owner) is John DeLucie, the founding chef at the Waverly Inn, Mr. Carter’s clubby Hollywood-on-the-Hudson saloon.

“Every time I see them — and they seem to travel everywhere together — I can’t help but think of those two brothers from ‘A Night at the Roxbury,’” Mr. Carter said.

The place has received mixed reviews (“he generally does better in the meat department than in fish,” Sam Sifton of The New York Times wrote of Mr. DeLucie’s cooking, while registering his disappointment that the crowd seemed to be made up of “JetBlue customers”), but is undeniably popular. As the Lion roared around them — Harvey Keitel was among the crowd; other diners since the restaurant opened in May have reportedly included Jennifer Aniston; Al Pacino; Tom Brokaw; Leonardo DiCaprio; Fergie; Karl Lagerfeld; the incoming schools chancellor, Cathleen Black; and the Google founder Sergey Brin — Mr. Abrams and Mr. Zinczenko explained how their friendship developed.

“Dave and I didn’t know each other that well,” Mr. Abrams said. “We’d bump into each other at events. Then in 2003, I had testicular cancer, and I didn’t tell anyone about it — maybe five people. I had a fairly significant surgery. I was weak, slumped over. I told people at work I’d been in an accident. When I started to leave the house again, one of the first nights I went out, it so happened Dave was there, at Soho House with a group of people, and he said, ‘Hey Dan. You don’t look so great. ...’”

Mr. Zinczenko jumped in: “I said, ‘Why are you so down? Life’s not that bad.’”

“I said, ‘All’s good,’” Mr. Abrams said.

“And I said, ‘You look terrible, lighten up; it’s not like you have ball cancer.’” Mr. Zinczenko said. “Most random thing ever. And he laughed it off: ‘Ha, ha, great to see you, I’ll send you some drinks.’”

“And about four months later, I went on the ‘Today’ show,” Mr. Abrams said, “to support a charity for Sean Kimerling, who was at Sloan-Kettering with testicular cancer when I was, who died. And I hadn’t planned on going public, but Sean’s family touched me so much. ...”

“So I’m watching TV, I’m drinking my smoothie, and Dan’s on the ‘Today’ show talking about his testicular cancer,” Mr. Zinczenko said.

“Then I’m in the car coming back from the ‘Today’ show,” Mr. Abrams said, “and Dave calls and says, ‘First of all, let me know if there’s anything I can do, I have tons of doctors at Men’s Health. Second, I am horrified.’

“We got together at Elaine’s a few days later, we laughed about it, it created a bond,” Mr. Zinczenko said.

“There were a couple of times, shortly thereafter, when we brought our then-girlfriends,” Mr. Abrams said. “We thought we’d all get along really well, so we went out to dinner, and — ”

“That didn’t really work — ”

“We thought they had similar interests — ”

“They were both Left Coast types — ”

“They didn’t like each other.”

A FEW days later Mr. Zinczenko was sitting in his large, light-filled office at Rodale Publishing in Midtown. He gets in around 7 a.m. and works out at a nearby Equinox during lunch hour. “David is able to spout nutrition statistics like a Princeton math professor,” said the film producer Hilary Shor (“Children of Men”), a friend. “I’ll be like, ‘Look honey, just tell me how many calories are in it.’”

Most of the Men’s Health editorial staff is located in Emmaus, Pa. Story ideas are discussed over hoops and bike rides; Mr. Zinczenko drives there once or twice a week in his BMW M5 sedan. “There are some opportunities to go slightly above the speed limit,” he said. “For a long time I was very concerned whether New York and Pennsylvania shared information. I’ve never gotten a clear answer, but I haven’t lost my license.”

“I love being in both places,” he continued. “One of the secrets of the magazine’s success is that it’s not a magazine put out by a bunch of New York editors trying to impress their media friends.”

Mr. Zinczenko grew up in Bethlehem, Pa. His parents divorced when he was 6. “I kind of grew up without a father,” he said. “I was a latchkey kid. My mom worked three or four jobs, I was fending for myself, having to put myself through college, joining the Navy Reserves, doing whatever I could to keep it together.” He graduated from Moravian College, then came to New York to work for Jann Wenner when Mr. Wenner was starting Men’s Journal. “I kind of got the bug after that,” Mr. Zinczenko said. Soon he went to work at Men’s Health, on its international editions (there are now 33) and rose to editor in chief at age 30. “People say: ‘When is he going to move on? Is he faking it?’” Mr. Zinczenko said. “I’m not faking it. It’s born from personal experience.”

He watched his father, who was overweight, die at 52, after a stroke. “There were a lot of tough nights: It’s three months later, it’s six months later, and you’re waking up in the middle of the night. He hadn’t been that much of a father to me, and that creates its own baggage, because you’re regretting all the things you didn’t do, all the things you didn’t have, that you were hoping you could come full circle on.”

Mr. Zinczenko has been dating Melissa Milne, a South African model and writer living in London, for three years. While he won’t discuss the relationship — “I feel if you’re talking about your private life, you’re also talking about someone else’s private life, and that’s not fair” — he says he wants marriage and children. “The stability, the support, having a family and a constant confidante. I want all of that.”

Speaking of his friendship with Mr. Abrams, he said: “A lot of good male friendships come down to relentless teasing as a way to talk about things that matter. For example, ‘The Abs Diet’ comes out, does really well. Then I wrote ‘Men, Love and Sex: The Complete User’s Guide for Women.’ It didn’t do well, and I remember Dan was checking Amazon a lot and saying to me, ‘Oh, It’s not looking very good.’ And I think the hard time he gave me about that helped me get back to focusing on what Men’s Health does best: food, nutrition, fitness. Which led to the “Eat This, Not That” books, which have six million copies in print.”

LIKE Mr. Zinczenko landing a job with Jann Wenner, Mr. Abrams also had an early lucky break: covering the O. J. Simpson trial.

“I was working for Court TV, and was in L.A.,” Mr. Abrams said. “And the two main reporters for Court TV happened to be on other stories. By the time the network figured out how big this was, I was already the expert on the story. So they kept me there.”

Mr. Abrams was sitting in his office in SoHo. Outside his door, the loft space was filled with employees of his five Web sites; Mediaite, Gossip Cop, Styleite, Geekosystem and SportsGrid. Traffic on those sites is 6.4 million unique visitors a month, according to Quantcast, The Times reported recently.

“I like the feeling that I’m on the right side of history,” Mr. Abrams said. “I think the Internet is comparable to the Homestead Act: Here’s a parcel of land, sign up, cultivate it, it’s yours. There’s all this land out there right now. You can be a major player. I’ve got less than 20 people working on all my sites.” He’s starting three new sites and expects to be profitable in February. “I’m funding this,” he said. “I have a little bit of money from my family, but this is mostly me.”

Mr. Abrams grew up in Manhattan, the son of the prominent First Amendment lawyer Floyd Abrams. “When we were kids,” Mr. Abrams said, “my sister, Ronnie, and I wouldn’t want to go to bed, so we’d ask our dad to tell us about his cases.”

“Dan was a rambunctious kid, always singing loudly on the bus so everyone could hear,” Ronnie Abrams said. “And an incredibly loyal, protective brother. These days, he’s our go-to baby sitter. He spends more time than people might think at the American Girl doll place; he even knows the personal shopper.”

Once the O. J. trial put Mr. Abrams on the map, NBC hired him, and he was headed for the biggest moment of his career, reporting the Bush v. Gore decision live on the steps of the Supreme Court in 2000. “I’m standing there with my NBC colleague Pete Williams,” said Mr. Abrams. “The decision has just come out — the opinion was short, but it was obtuse; it made it sound like the case was still alive.

“And Tom Brokaw is saying to me, 45 seconds in, ‘So, Dan, does this mean this thing is over?’ live on NBC News — this was before the Internet was so ubiquitous, people were watching TV to find out what happened — and I’m saying, ‘Give me a second, Tom.’ It was like taking a law school exam on the air with the world watching.” In 2007, Mr. Abrams was given his own weeknight 9 o’clock program — “Verdict With Dan Abrams” — on MSNBC. Previously, he had another program, “The Abrams Report,” from 2001 to 2006, and was the general manager of MSNBC in 2006 and 2007. The following year, a few months before the presidential election, he was replaced on the air by Rachel Maddow, who was given her own program after establishing herself as a popular left-leaning pundit during the campaign. Mr. Abrams was diplomatic — in public at least — calling it the right move for the network.

“Media is so unpredictable these days, there’s no way to definitively map out where your choices are going to land you,” Mr. Abrams said. “Dave and I question the thinking of people who view themselves as new media leaders. As a result, we wing it, and we use each other as a sounding board.”

Both men live within walking distance of the Lion, Mr. Zinczenko in a 2,000-square-foot loft-like apartment, Mr. Abrams in the first three floors of a brownstone. The two share a year-round beachfront rental (with pool) in Southampton.

Mr. Abrams declined comment on his current love life except to say he’s dating someone he did not want to name. “I would never have thought, when I was in my 20s, that I would be 44 and single,” he said. “I know I will have kids. I may or not get married, but family’s very important to me. Growing up with a sister, someone I talk to all the time, helps me appreciate women.”

Mr. Abrams has a book coming out in February called “Man Down: Proof Beyond a Reasonable Doubt That Women Are Better Cops, Drivers, Gamblers, Spies, World Leaders, Beer Tasters, Hedge Fund Managers and Just About Everything Else.”

“I actually had evidence that women are also better snipers,” he said, “but the evidence wasn’t solid enough to make it into the book.”

Back inside the restaurant, under Basquiats, LaChapelles and black and white crime photos, the two friends were discussing what brought them there.

“When I came to New York in the 1990s, I started hanging out at Elaine’s,” Mr. Zinczenko said. “Elaine was like my New York mother. She was always really warm to me, she would lend me advice and introduce me to writers. I was blown away by how it was more than a restaurant. She’d have her writers, her artists, her police commissioners. Later, I was one of the Waverly’s biggest customers. Graydon really redefined the things an editor can do. That created a feeling in us: You know what? This is possible.”

Mr. Abrams added, “We knew that Dave and Dan being involved in a restaurant — ”

“It could be a plus,” Mr. Zinczenko said.

“A plus or a negative,” Mr. Abrams said. “We hoped we would add to the value of the restaurant.”

“When John DeLucie brought us to see this space, it all came together,” Mr. Zinczenko said.

“And we were willing to send e-mails to our friends in the media,” Mr. Abrams said, “saying ‘Look, we’re involved in this restaurant, we’d love to for you to come by.’”

The conversation returned to their friendship.

“I think it’s very authentic,” Mr. Zinczenko said. “We challenge each other, help each other thrive in this strange and occasionally wicked media world.”

“As two guys who are in the media, and who live the lives we do, there are a lot of people who want to see us fail,” Mr. Abrams said.

“Who’s we, Tonto?” Mr. Zinczenko said.

“If you don’t know that people want to see you fail, then you, my friend, are blind to the truth,” Mr. Abrams said.