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Journalist Steven Roberts often tells people that being married to a Catholic has made him a better Jew.

Similarly, his wife, journalist Cokie Roberts, says being in an interfaith marriage has made her more knowledgeable about her Catholic faith.

The two, who recently wrote “Our Haggadah: Uniting Traditions for Interfaith Families,” will speak Saturday at Centenary United Methodist Church in Winston-Salem about their marriage, spirituality and holiday traditions for interfaith couples. The event is sponsored by the literacy organization Bookmarks.

Cokie, an author and 20-year veteran of ABC News, and Steven, a veteran of the New York Times, ABC News Radio and NPR, have for many years hosted a Seder in their Washington-area home that has attracted a number of other interfaith couples.

“In fact, there have been years where I’ve looked around and my parents were the only couple where both of them were Jewish and everyone else was a mixed couple,” Steven said in a telephone interview. “So that’s always been part of the spirit, part of the feel of our Passover, to make it comfortable, to make it accessible, to make it joyful for people who don’t share that heritage and didn’t grow up with it.”

The title of the book refers to the religious text that is read on the first night of Passover and details the Jewish enslavement in and Exodus from Egypt. In Hebrew, the word “Haggadah” means “the telling.”

The Robertses met at a student political meeting in 1962, while Steven was attending Harvard University and Cokie was attending Wellesley College.

The daughter of Congress members Hale and Lindy Boggs of Louisiana, Cokie was born in New Orleans and attended Catholic school. Steve, a native of Bayonne, N.J., was the grandson of Jewish immigrants from Eastern Europe.

They married in 1966.

“It was a very big deal especially for Steve’s family,” Cokie said. “They lived in a very Jewish community, and it was just not done for somebody to marry a person who was not Jewish. And so it was very difficult for them.”

But Steven said Cokie’s parents were very understanding about his family’s concerns.

“Cokie’s mom had always assumed that her daughter would get married in a church, have a big church wedding,” he said. “And when she realized that might be uncomfortable for my family, my grandfathers in particular, they made an accommodation, and we got married in the garden of her home. And after a few years, my parents similarly became very attached, very fond of Cokie. There was a point where my father said, 'It’d be so much easier to oppose this marriage if it wasn’t so clear that she was the perfect girl for you.’ ”

“Our Haggadah” is part memoir and part guide on how to host a Seder. Over the years, the two say, many interfaith couples had sought their advice on observing holiday traditions, and they wanted to offer some perspective on what has worked for them.

“A lot of young people are grappling with the problem of how to merge with someone else’s traditions and come up with a set of values and rituals that work for both,” Steven said. “This book is not the Gospel according to Steve and Cokie. It’s encouraging and helping young families find their own way.”

The couple has two children, Lee, a Raleigh-based real estate investor, and Rebecca, a Washington journalist. Growing up, they celebrated Hanukkah, Christmas, Passover and Easter, and Steven and Cokie let them make their own decisions about what faiths they wanted to follow.

Likewise, the husband and wife say there’s never been any question of either converting to the other’s faith, and in fact, they’ve been able to strengthen their own religious convictions.

“I grew up Jewish in the tribal or cultural sense,” Steven said. “I played basketball at the Jewish community center, went to Cub Scouts there. That was very much part of my life, but religious ritual was not. And marrying a Catholic, someone for whom ritual and the practice of religion was far more important than

it was in my family, it made me see some of the virtues of that way of living and the value of being closer to a religious tradition.”

Cokie said studying Judaism helped her learn more about the roots of Christianity.

“The rabbis who are cited in the Haggadah every Passover were very influential around Jerusalem in the time of Jesus and were teachers of the Apostles, men who were founders of the church,” she said. “And so their thinking and their approach to Judaism was very much the approach that Paul and Peter brought into the foundation of the church. And that was very interesting to me because I think that just tied it all so much together.”

Contact Robert C. Lopez at 691-5091 or robert.lopez@news-record.com