house during the day, as he was worried about her health and state of mind), Julie reluctantly accepted.
On the day of the interview, her hair a mess, wearing no makeup and a pajama top (she could care less), she went to the studio. When Ralph opened the door, she was pleasantly surprised at how cute he was and how comfortable she felt with him. “Hmm,” she thought, “maybe a little affair before I leave for California would be nice, nothing serious of course.” She found herself sitting at attention and on her best behavior during the interview. But she left with no plans to see Ralph again.
Julie’s publicist called and insisted she come see a show he was involved with on a certain night because that was the night Ralph was going to be there. Again, reluctantly, Julie said OK. However, when she got there and saw Ralph sitting across the room, for reasons she couldn’t understand, she found herself climbing over chairs and pushing people out of the way to grab a seat near him. She suddenly had the sinking feeling in her stomach that this would not just be an affair but was something more serious. And she didn’t want that!
She and Ralph had a pleasant evening together, and a few days later she left for California. When she arrived in California there was a message from Ralph welcoming her to California (he was still in New York), and while she was out there they spoke every day on the phone. But Julie was making her life in California and Ralph was on the radio in New York, so it seemed unlikely much would happen.
As fate would have it, the development deal Julie was working on in Los Angeles became contingent upon her appearing in a show in New York, so before long she found herself back there. She and Ralph still hardly knew each other, but out of the blue Ralph invited her on a vacation to Aruba and she found herself accepting. Four months later, Ralph had a heart-to-heart talk with her about having to take a leap and get serious. That night they went to see the movie Frankie and Johnnie, which was about just that, and Julie found herself weeping through the whole film. The next day they got engaged and they’ve been happily married for years.
When Al was in his early twenties, in the late 1930s, he was a great dancer. He would go to clubs in New York, New Jersey, and Connecticut and dance the night away. He had beautiful dancing partners in all these places, but none of them ever clicked for him as being the girl he could get serious with. When he went to the army, he was transferred to Arkansas.
In the evenings, some of the men would cross the state border into Tennessee and dance with the girls who were brought down there, with chaperones of course, to dance with the soldiers. At his first dance, he spent the evening watching a girl on the dance floor and said to himself, “That’s the one.” He says he’ll never forget the feeling and doesn’t know why she was the one. She just looked right to him. As her bus was leaving after the dance, Al jumped on the back and through the open window asked her out. They immediately began dating and spending evenings dancing together.
Before he went overseas he gave her a ring and he said, “If things don’t work out well for me overseas, throw away the ring and start over. If they do work out well, marry me when I get back.” Al came back, they got married, and remained married until her death in 1990.
Heartbreaks in Common Brought Them Together (Very Slowly)
Marianne was in her early forties, was married to a very wealthy oilman, and was the mother of seven children. During a fairly routine discussion one evening, her husband shockingly informed her that he no longer wanted to be married and left. Suddenly, she was the single parent of seven kids, and her whole life turned upside down. Although she felt extremely humiliated and frightened, Marianne quickly determined that she was going to face the challenge in front of her and raise those children. Meeting someone was the last thing on her mind.
A couple of years after her husband left, Marianne decided to go back to school. She was taking a course in Ethnic and Economic Backgrounds, and Joe was her teacher. In this course, students had to get up and tell their life story, so Joe knew a good bit about Marianne’s history. Joe also thought she wrote thoughtful, intelligent, well-written papers. During that year, Joe’s wife, who had been going through a long illness, died. The class knew about it, and Marianne sent him a card.
At the end of the last class, Marianne and Joe were talking, and Marianne told him about her husband leaving her with the seven kids. After Marianne left the room, Joe turned to someone standing next to him and said, “My God, how could he leave a woman like her?” Over the next six months they would pass each other in the cafeteria and say hello. One day, on a whim, Marianne approached Joe and invited him to the ballet. He accepted. On their first date Joe was really strange, talking about other women and seeming not to be interested in Marianne at all. Marianne left that date thinking, “Forget about him, he’s really weird.” About six months later, Marianne’s phone rang and it was Joe. At first she didn’t even call him back, but then he called again, she went out with him, and they married soon after.
For those too young to remember, Horn & Hardart (better known as “The Automat”) was a very popular New York restaurant chain. It was unique because the walls were lined with little glass doors behind which were sandwiches, salads, desserts and drinks. You put a nickel, dime, or quarter in the slot next to a particular door, it opened, and voila, you had your meal. No waiter, no check, just “Automatic” service.
Gene had just returned home from World War II and was eating in the Horn & Hardart in Manhattan. He saw a young woman eating with her sisters and went over and asked her to dance. It was a strange and unusual thing to do in a fast food restaurant, but she said yes, and not long after she said yes again when he asked her to marry him.
Bill and his brother John were walking down the street in the small town in which they lived, when they came across a group of pretty young girls. John went up to the girls and asked, “Who wants to marry my brother Bill?” Dee raised her hand and said. “I will.” And she did!
“Hey Minister! Who’s the Babe in the Pew?”
Joe was the new music minister at a church in Texas. He was sitting on the dais one Sunday morning with the Head Minister during services when a young woman in a purple dress walked in from the back of the church and sat down. Joe, totally knocked out by this woman, leaned over to the minister and mouthed, “Who’s the babe?” “What?” said the minister, unable to make out what he was saying. “Who’s the babe?” “What?” “Who’s the really hot babe in the purple dress who just walked in and sat down?” “That’s my daughter!” Oops. Anyway, it turned out the girl was the minister’s daughter and that she didn’t very often come to church. Joe decided that the way to meet her was to get her to join the choir. A novel approach, walking up to a girl you’re interested in and saying, “You look like an alto, why don’t you be in the choir?” But she
