People meet and fall in love in the strangest ways.
On a steamship voyage, Mark Twain met a man who showed him a small ivory portrait of his sister. One glance was all it took to convince Twain that he had found the woman of his dreams.
"I have read those absurd fairy tales in my time, but I never, never, never expected to be the hero of a romance in real life as unlooked for and unexpected as the wildest of them," Twain wrote in a Valentine's Day article in 1870 after he had tracked down, wooed and married "Livy" Langdon.
Twain was right. Love is often unlooked for and unexpected. It can be as sweet as a fairy tale . . . or as absurd as it was for my husband and me.
One of our first dates was a daylong ski trip in 1982 with friends to Hunter Mountain, N.Y., in a 1966 Volvo 122 -- a car that was long past its prime. On our way to the ski area, somewhere near Newburgh, N.Y., the car's hood flew open while we were cruising behind a truck. We discarded the dented and useless part on the shoulder of the New York State Thruway, and giggled our way back home through what turned out to be a blizzard. It was the most romantic day I'd ever spent.
We didn't ski that day and haven't tried to hit the slopes since. But the Volvo is still with us, having been driven, trucked and transported by train to eight different residences. It reminds me of how I fell in love with the man behind its wheel, in part because he helps me face the bizarre twists of life with a smile.
Lots of people have equally quirky stories to tell about how they embarked on the greatest romance of their lives. We spoke to nine couples, some well-known, some not. With Valentine's Day just two days away, we offer their stories.
David Lockington and Dylana Jenson
Of all the tales about great romantic meetings, love at first sight has to be the most cliched. But it is the simple truth for David Lockington, associate conductor of the Baltimore Symphony Orchestra, and his wife, concert violinist Dylana Jenson.
He was 26, a cellist with the Denver Symphony Orchestra in 1982, when Dylana, then 20, was hired as a guest soloist to perform the Beethoven Violin Concerto.
"At rehearsal, as soon as she walked in, I felt attracted to her," says David, a London native.
And what was it about him?
"His very large hand-knit sweater -- and his moccasins," Dylana says. "I thought, 'He looks so comfortable, I could marry him.' "
They flirted silently through the rehearsal, but didn't speak until after the concert the next day, which her mother attended.
"I kept sending my mother out to see if he was coming back to my dressing room," says Dylana. "He later said that he kept watching to see when my mother was leaving."
Finally, he decided to make his move, saying to a colleague he passed backstage: "Well, I'm off to propose."
They spent the next day at Denver's Celebrity Fun Center, a water theme park. But when Dylana suggested that she might stay in the city the next week, David rejected the idea. He was involved in a long-distance relationship with someone else. He told her to leave, even though it was "against intuition and what I wanted."
In the morning, she left a note in his mail slot at the symphony saying that she had decided to stay. A bold move, as affairs of the heart go, but she was confident.
"I was certain that he was absolutely in love with me," she says.
She was right. Two months later, they were engaged. Two
months after that, on Feb. 16, 1983, they were married. They now live in Mount Washington. It was almost the opposite of love at first sight for Donna Beth Joy Shapiro, who met her husband, Fred Shoken, in 1983, when she went with a friend to Baltimore's Commission for Historical and Architectural Preservation, where Fred worked at the time.
"I didn't find him too attractive," says the 35-year-old Charles Village resident, owner of the Old Waverly History Exchange & Tea Room. "He was sort of nondescript."
Fred, 38, who now works for Baltimore's Bureau of Transportation, also had a strong reaction to the first sighting of his future wife.
"Her appearance was weird," he says. At the time, she often wore her knee-length black hair braided and coiled under a dramatic piece of headgear. "You have to understand, she has 300 hats," he says.
On the surface, they were as different as two people can be -- he soft-spoken and shy, dressed in what she describes as perma-press shirts and orthopedic shoes, she a gale-force gust of personal style and frankness.
Which makes what happened next particularly odd. Three years after meeting Fred, while serving with him on the board of Baltimore Heritage, a historic-preservation organization, she had a dream about him. To save him the embarrassment, she won't disclose the details.
She woke deeply disturbed.
"I'm wondering, why him? It would be the same thing as having a dream about Ronald Reagan," she says. "At the next meeting, I started paying more attention."
A month later, Donna asked him if he wanted to get something to eat after an evening board meeting. Fred liked the idea.
"I was hungry and her hair was down," he says.
Dinner turned into a four-hour conversation.
The couple married six months later, on June 28, 1987.
Donna still wears hats, though her hair is much shorter now. And Fred's wardrobe has improved, she says, in part thanks to her vintage-tie collection.
Throughout their relationship, they've shared a love of old buildings, like the Greyhound Station at Howard and Centre streets that they fought to save, and the Senator Theater on York Road that they helped get on the National Register of Historic Places.
Even their wedding rings are inscribed with a preservationist's credo. It's a quote from 19th-century English writer and critic John Ruskin: "When we build, let us think that we build forever."
Forget a thousand words. What's a picture's worth if it's the catalyst for a marriage? Ask NewsChannel 2 anchorwoman Mary Beth Marsden and Dean Witter Reynolds stockbroker Mark McGrath, who are newlyweds living in Mount Washington.
Mark had lined up Mary Beth and other celebrities to participate in the opening ceremonies of the Special Olympics in Towson. It was summer 1993. That day, he snapped an angelic picture of Mary Beth surrounded by kids, the sun setting in the background.
Thrilled with how it turned out, he framed the photo and sent it to her. When Mary Beth called to thank him, he asked her to lunch -- not for love, says the stockbroker, but for business.
"The first thing she said was, 'I'm not buying any stock,' " he recalls.
After a few dinners, romance followed. Of course, once they were seriously involved, her portfolio was in his hands. "That came with the package," says Mark.
During dinner one night while they were on vacation in York, England, Mark steered the conversation to matrimony.
"I said I never pictured myself getting married," Mary Beth recalls.
"He said, 'Well, do you picture it now?' "
Her response: Oh. My. God. She repeated the words over and over while her dinner got cold. Finally, Mark said, "I think you have to answer me now."
"We met at a perfect time in our lives because we were both looking to settle down," says Mark, who also worked in television news until 1991.
The couple, both in their 30s, were married on Jan. 14.
UI "It clicked," Mary Beth says. "When it's right, you'll just know it." A serious commitment was the last thing on the minds of Gail and Ernest Kromah when they met at a party in 1974. After all, both were ending unsuccessful marriages.
"I was looking forward to living the life of a single woman, but he never gave me the opportunity," says Gail, 46.
That's easy to understand of Ernest, 56, a painter and master baker who rhapsodizes about the delicacy of his wife's hands. After 12 years of marriage, he still speaks of shopping for shoes with her, not as a chore, but as a divine opportunity to sneak a peak at her ankles.
"That's how I think," he says. "And it's not only how I think, that's how I live."
"He has studied women a lot," Gail says. "It took me a long time to accept that. Women really have been the focus of his artwork and his whole life."
The couple, who live in Charles Center and run the Baltimore Grand catering company, spent their first evening together talking, amazed at how much they had in common: the arts, multiethnic studies, home renovation, vegetarian cooking.
"We talked and talked and talked. Before I knew it, it was sunrise," Gail says.
"It was unbelievable that our interests were so much alike," he says.
Five months later, Gail, a Baltimore elementary school teacher at the time, went to Africa as a teacher-ambassador to Baltimore's sister city, Gbarnga, in Liberia. After seven weeks, Ernest sold his beloved maroon 1973 Jaguar XKE and followed. It's where he proposed -- in vain.
"Do you love me?" he asked.
She said no.
"But you will," he told her.
Why was he so confident?
"I knew that the best thing that could ever happen to her would be me," he says. "And the best thing that could ever happen to me would be her."
While waiting for her to give in, he found work in Africa as an artist and photographer. They returned to the States in 1976 but didn't marry until Dec. 31, 1982. However, Gail says, they felt married long before. That's why they celebrate their anniversary not on New Year's Eve, but on April 18, which is Ernest's birthday and close to the date that they first met.
:. "It's more significant for us," Gail says. When Benjamin L. Cardin set off for kindergarten with milk money in his pocket, how was he to know that his future wife, Myrna, was in a classroom down the hall at Liberty Elementary School in Forest Park?
Though they started school together during the late 1940s, they didn't really know each other until the sixth grade. "I think we became more social around that time," says Myrna. "Our synagogue had dances, and that's when I started to look at boys."
They were good friends by the 10th grade, when he asked her to his fraternity's pledge party. "I needed a date and she was a
good sport and decided to step in," says the congressman, a four-term Democrat serving Maryland's Third District.
After that night, "We never went out with anyone else," Myrna says.
Myrna's big heart is one of the reasons Benjamin Cardin fell for her. "She really goes out of her way to give of herself," he says. "I think I recognized that at an early age."
It's easy for Myrna to remember why she fell in love with "Benji" all those years ago.
"He was smart, he was full of adventure, which he still is," Myrna says. "Why not hang around with a guy like that?"
And it didn't hurt that he drove just about the coolest car in town. When they went to the movies at the Crest on Reisterstown Road, he called for her in his mother's brand-new 1959 silver Chevy Impala convertible.
"Can you imagine riding around in that Impala with the top down?" says Myrna, who married the lawmaker on Nov. 24, 1964. "There's nothing to top that." They say timing is everything. It certainly was for Donald Dunson, who was driving along Forest Park Avenue in December 1976, just as his future wife, Odessa, had given up on the No. 15 bus.
Frustrated, she waved to Donald and asked if he could give her a ride to Security Square Mall so she could pick up something to wear for New Year's Eve. On his way home, but no fool to an opportunity, Donald agreed not only to drive her there, but also to wait while she shopped.
"I wasn't really scared," says Odessa, a small-framed woman in her 40s and now an owner of the Metropol Cafe and Art Gallery on Charles Street. "I think people were a little more trustworthy in the '70s with hitchhiking and all."
What else persuaded her to climb into the passenger seat of Donald's 1974 two-toned Chevy Monte Carlo? She was in a familiar neighborhood, she thought she had seen him before and, she emphasizes, "It was a very cold day."
They talked while they drove. "She liked my style and I liked her style," says Donald.
"The fact that he was going to take me out there, and that he was going to wait, I started to think that this must be a really nice person," Odessa says.
They exchanged phone numbers and started to date.
What was it about Odessa that made Donald go out of his way?
"She was so little. Petite," says the 65-year-old retired Northwood tailor, savoring each syllable. "I liked that." He married Odessa on May 30, 1980. Clothes make the man, but Jill DiNola wasn't quite sure what they said about her future husband, Marc, a Baltimore dentist. He was dressed as a skating kangaroo when they met on Halloween night 1990 at an Irish bar on Water Street.
"He had fur on from his head to his toes," says Jill, a psychotherapist. "All you could see was his face."
The DiNolas, who live in Ridgely's Delight near Oriole Park at Camden Yards, were University of Maryland graduate students at the time. He was 24. She was 22. They started talking about in-line skating, and later had a more serious discussion -- about social work and the welfare of children. It was "high-level stuff" that Jill found hilarious, considering she was talking to what looked like a giant stuffed animal. (She had not worn a costume.)
The next night, when they met at a downtown pub, Jill was relieved to take her first glimpse of Marc in street clothes. After all, she says, who knew what the costume could be hiding?
"He was cuter than I had thought," Jill says.
They started dating, and drove to New Jersey together for Thanksgiving a month later. "We stopped for dinner, and during the dinner, he looked over at me and told me that when he first met me, he thought he could marry me," Jill says. "I recall throwing my napkin at him. What could I say to this? It was too scary. In the parking lot, he picked me up and spun me around, and I was thinking, 'This is how it is supposed to be.' "
Oct. 31 continues to be an important date for the couple, who dressed as Frankenstein and his bride last year. They thought the costumes a fitting choice, since they were married three months earlier, on July 9, 1994.
H
"[Halloween] is one of my favorite holidays," says Marc. If the way to a man's heart is through his ego, Ruth Logsdon gave Mark Noone just the right gift.
After seeing Mark perform with the Slickee Boys, a D.C.-based rock band that was hot in the late '70s and the '80s, Ruth was inspired to paint a portrait of him from a stamp-size photo on the back of one of the group's records.
It wasn't that she was in love with him -- yet. At the time, "I would just draw everything I could get my hands on," says the former Maryland Institute, College of Art student. She actually painted all the band members. "He did strike me as the most interesting one," she says.
The guy she was then dating -- the same man who first brought her to see the Slickee Boys and gave her the record that was her inspiration -- was an acquaintance of the singer. He encouraged her to give the painting to Mark.
At Desperados, a club in Washington, he told Mark between sets, "You know, I've got a young lady up here who wants to meet you." He led Mark up to the balcony, where Ruth was sitting. She gave him the painting.
"It was really good," says Mark. "Fans give you stuff, but this was really personal. I was extremely flattered."
She was 21 and he was 26 when they started dating in 1981. Mark says Ruth came to every one of the band's area shows. In the early 1980s, the guys were performing regularly throughout the region. Among their Baltimore gigs: the Marble Bar in the old Congress Hotel on West Franklin Street.
At a friend's party in December 1982, Mark proposed to Ruth in classic rock-star style -- in a hot tub. The couple married on Oct. 1, 1983, and now live in Takoma Park.
Now, they make music together, as the duo Rip 'n Ruby. They also are lead singers with their own bands, Ruthie and the Wranglers and Out Behind the Barn. But when the Slickee Boys, who broke up in 1990, get together for their reunion shows, Ruth is happy to be on the other side of the stage, just like in the old days. "She was definitely a fan," says Mark. "She was always in front, always dancing."