The importance of Oscar Wilde

Quite a few years back, I shared a small office with a woman whose husband was named Ernest. One day I made the mistake of referring to him as Ernie. She let me know that his name was Ernest, and I was not to call him Ernie.
    Recently I learned from a friend who had had dinner with her and Ernest a couple of years ago that they were no longer married. The friend himself, I noticed, referred to Ernest as Ernie. I wondered about that.
    I mentioned this to another friend who had also known Ernest/Ernie and his former wife, and he suggested that maybe it was because she called him Ernie that they got divorced?
    I said, "Well, but our friend who told me that calls him Ernie too...."
    "Hmm," this other friend said.
    I said, "Maybe she called him Ernest one time too many?"
    He said, "Maybe she hadn't realized the extent, for her husband, of the importance of not being Ernest?"
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The photo from Wikipedia was captioned: "The original production of The Importance of Being Earnest in 1895 with Allan Aynesworth as Algernon (left) and George Alexander as Jack (right)."