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The day Ben and Candy Carson squeezed in some time to talk to

Marriage Partnership was not just busy, it was crazy. They had scheduled our interview in Chicago just a couple of hours after Ben was interviewed on Good Morning America in New York and Candy had dropped off a son at music lessons in Maryland and just two hours before some radio interviews. After those interviews, Ben was off to Atlanta for more engagements before meeting Candy and their three sons back home in Baltimore, where their days would return to normal.

Of course, the Carsons' "normal" schedule may not sound normal to you. Ben is director of pediatric neurosurgery at Johns Hopkins Hospital, where he routinely puts in 16-hour days. And that's before he squeezes in his speaking engagements, board meetings at Yale University and the Kellogg Company and work on his latest book. Meanwhile, Candy is an accomplished concert musician and helps manage the Carson Scholars Fund.

You'd think that when they finally found five minutes free of any demands, they'd just relax, maybe engage in some casual chit-chat. Not so for the Carsons.

"Have you ever played 'Taboo'?" Candy asks before hauling the game cards from her purse. And so, instead of catching their breath before their next appointment, we play the word game. And I use the word "play" with reservations. The Carsons both exude a sense of competitiveness—his more cool, hers more ferocious. I'd never actually felt intimidated playing a game before, but never had I played with two super-smart people who either sat up, leaning toward you or settled back, slyly eyeing you (Candy and Ben, respectively), waiting to catch you "cheating." I lost, I think.

Idle time is foreign to the Carsons' way of life. Candy gets up early, preparing breakfast, packing lunches and making sure their three sons, ages 12, 13 and 15, squeeze in music practice before school. Ben sits down for breakfast, usually taking advantage of the chance to chat with at least one of their sons. Then he leaves for work as their sons head off to school.

"A typical day for me," says the world- renowned neurosurgeon, "would be get to work, do two or three operations after checking on the sickest patients and making rounds. Any free time at all would be a meeting scheduled with somebody from the laboratory or one of my patients. Or I'll have to give a lecture to medical students and then deal with all my physician assistants, who take most of the clinical phone calls and are lined up at the door all the time to tell me about different problems. Then we have to go make rounds and come back and review X-rays. Then I may do a little work on a manuscript."

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