Village valentines: couples describe roads to their hearts

Compiled by Lauren Heaton

For Valentine’s Day today, 10 Yellow Springs couples told the News how they met and decided to become partners. Some have been together only a few years, and others have been married nearly 63 years. All of them have a love story.

Bette Kelley and Wayne Gulden: We met on a blind date the week before Valentine’s Day 20 years ago. I was working as a costumer for the Dayton Ballet, and I needed to finish costumes for the following day’s dress rehearsal. I had to make a choice — which was more important, my life or my job. I figured what the heck, my life is infinitely more important than my job.

I was in my 40s, and I decided I’d just be myself. He was either going to like me or he wasn’t. I wore my long hair down with a turtleneck, a long sweater and my silver and amethyst necklace I adore, and I put on my nicest pair of corduroy jeans and purple shoes.

She was a hippie. But she was interesting. You could tell right away, here’s someone who’s perceptive and really looks at things.

He piqued my interest because he was my age, and he was really interesting to talk to. And the next day, it was snowing and ugly outside, I learned he was going to drive through snow to Chicago and back just to exchange a Salvador Dali print strapped to the top of his Corolla for a fabulous pastel (which we still have). And I kept thinking, well, I would do that!

We are both 61, and we will have been married 18 years in May.

Alex and Minerva Bieri: Back in 1997 when I was a junior in high school, Mine came over for her senior year as an exchange student from Orizaba, Mexico.

We met and started dating, but at the end of the year she returned to Mexico to attend university in Vera Cruz. That was my senior year, and because I never was too into school, I was thrilled to be able to graduate six months early. After our long-distance thing, I wanted to see where we were. So with just a couple of years of high school Spanish, I went to Mexico to visit her.

The first six months we taught English classes to children, and then I enrolled in college with Mine, and soon it was past the point of no return. We stayed three years, got married there a couple days before Valentine’s Day in 2000, and then returned to wait for her green card status in Yellow Springs, where we’ve been ever since. We have two kids, Diego, 7 months, and Daniella, who is 2 and completely bilingual. Mine runs a daycare center here, and I’m director of manufacturing at Kelly and Co. in Millworks.

Was it a leap of faith? Yeah, but it always is, isn’t it?

Peg and Richard Bird: We belonged to the same dog training club, Gem City in Kettering. I had two dogs, and Richard’s partner at the time had a Siberian husky that was eating his way through doors. We were friends 7 years before we found out at a business meeting at the club that we were both unattached at the same time.

We immediately started out showing dogs together. But Richard was determined to remain single, and I realized if anything was going to happen, I would have to help it along. He had this chair with a floor lamp beside it where he always sat to read and watch TV. When he came home that evening he called, and I told him to turn on the lamp and read to me what was taped to the inside of the shade.

“Will you marry me, damn it?” he said. And then he said yes.

It’s a mixed marriage. Peg had two keeshonds (a Dutch companion breed sometimes known as an overweight Pomeranian) and a German shepherd, and I had five Siberian huskies. Peg was also a Quaker, and I was Buddhist. So we married at Rockford Chapel with a reception at Oten Gallery.

We’ve been married 24 years.

Toshiko and George Asakawa: We both grew up in the San Diego area. The Japanese were a small minority then and by association through our parents we kind of knew most of the Japanese community in San Diego County.

George and I had met through the Japanese Congregational Church. During the war my family and I were sent to a relocation camp in Poston, Ariz. While George had graduated from Cal Tech, he couldn’t get a job on the West Coast due to discrimination, and when the war broke out, he was drafted into the army.

Meanwhile, I left camp to go to nursing school in Rochester, Minn. George’s aunt encouraged him to write to me at school, and then he came for several visits. I thought he was very easy to get along with, and he seemed like a good solid anchor. We were married July 27, 1945, in Alabama, where he was stationed. It was between V.E. Day and V.J. Day. None of our family members, who were restricted on travel, were present.

George then had enough points to be discharged, and we came “home” to be with the family in Yellow Springs, where George’s brother had taken a job as manager of the Morgan coop dorm at Antioch College.

Allan and El’girtha Ryder: It was 1966, and I was at home in bed when my girlfriends came and got me and took me to the Tahiti Hut night club in Dayton. My kids from my first marriage were older, so I got up and got dressed to go.

We sat with a guy that goes to my church. He was sharp, dark complected. Usually I don’t go for chocolate, I go for vanilla. He said to us, you don’t mind if my roommate sits with us? And when Allan came through the door, oh my lord, I thought, well that is the finest thing I have ever seen. I told my girlfriend, don’t you say a word, that thing is mine!

When the bar closed at 2:30 he asked for my number, and I gave it to him. Then I asked myself, do you know what you just did? But I didn’t care, he was fine in his brown suede jacket, chocolate pants, a beige sweater and black shoes.

He called on Sunday, and we’ve been together ever since. We broke up once over some ugly girl. So I called long-distance crying to my grandmother, the matriarch of our family, who said we will pray, and if the Lord sends him back he’s meant for you. If not, we will help you get over this.

We married in 1969 and moved to Yellow Springs in 1985, and we have never had nobody say nothin’ racial about us — even on one of our first dates at the Oakwood Club, where these old white women about broke their arms whacking each other to look at us. We have never had nothin’ but a good life. I love him more now than I ever have.

Kay and CT Chen: I met CT at Pittsburg University in the late 1970s where I came to study English as a second language. He was a graduate student in the electrical engineering department and a member of the Taiwanese Association who was helping orient new students. I saw he was from Taipei, the same as my home country, and when I heard him speaking Mandarin it just felt like home.

He helped me sign up for classes, and took me shopping and helped move my stuff into my apartment. He liked to take pictures, and we often went out with his friends or around the Carnegie Mellon University park to walk in the evenings or experiment with his camera.

Honestly, he was not my type. Because I worked in the East Asian diplomatic center in Japan for five years before coming here, he didn’t look serious and he was wearing very lousy jeans, and dressed in a Western style. But I decided that you can’t tell from the outside. He told me he wanted to graduate before getting married, and that seemed reasonable to me. He was working hard, and even though he would never be very rich, I could see he would be a good one to take care of a family.

He grew up in Taipei, and I lived there for several years, but we never met. I kept thinking, why did I have to walk so far to meet this guy? I only meant to come to the U.S. for a year for experience. But you never know.

Phyllis and Ted Jackson: Ted’s sister and I had worked together at Wright Patterson, and in 1946 I took a train or bus, I can’t remember, from Yellow Springs to visit her in Mansfield where her family was from. It was Memorial Day weekend, and I was in my early 20s.

I can’t say it was love at first sight, but we were compatible at first sight. We were both at an age when we were both enjoying music and dancing swing; it’s been a long time since we’ve done that. It was kind of a long distance romance — he would come here two to three times a month. I was working at Wright Patt, and he got a job at Westinghouse in Mansfield.

We were engaged on Valentine’s Day in 1948. It was very cold, we were at my house, and I was fixing dinner for him. He surprised me with a ring. I had no idea, but I was willing. We got married the following September at the AME Church here in Yellow Springs. We’ve had fun together, and we’re still very good friends.

Shane and Miracle Elam: We met at Bethel Elementary School in Tipp City. He was very cute but also sort of annoying, so I didn’t really like him that much, although he was my boyfriend for about eight days in seventh grade. Then I moved away and came back for my junior year. At the beginning of our senior year, we were talking at a football game. He was trying to pursue me, and though he wasn’t necessarily the type of guy I would have given my number to, he leaned over and gave me a kiss on my temple. That’s when I gave him my number. He called me that weekend, and from then on we were pretty much together all the time.

We decided that year, 1994, we would get married, even though most everyone was against it, figuring it wouldn’t last. Our parents tried to be supportive, even though they thought we were making a mistake.

Part of it was that I had already been living on my own, with my grandmother and then with friends for a couple of years, and there was a part of me that was ready to be living with a partner. He’s really funny and still makes me laugh, even in the middle of our worst fights. And I also saw when he played with his nephew that he would be a loving, caring, and really wonderful father, too.

Heather Sage and Tony Frabotta: We were both psych undergrads at Ohio University. We got to know each other working at a group home for MRDD residents. And on spring break in 1993 when our friends were all doing other things, we decided to go camping, just the two of us. We didn’t know where we would go, so we went on a road trip and found ourselves in the New River Gorge in West Virginia just as spring was arriving.

We found this site right along the river, where we could see white water rafters coming through. We went all over the area, day hiking, cooking over a camp fire. There were lots of waterfalls, and the buds all popped on the trees that week. It felt very spiritual.

We got married in 1997 on the summer solstice by a friend from the Unitarian Universalist Fellowship, acknowledging the great spirit and love in all things.

Jo Frannye and Mike Reichert: Mike and I were both students at the University of Dayton. He was a basketball player, and I was a cheerleader. We were aware of each other, but I was engaged to be married to someone else after graduation. I sat next to him on the airplane on the way back from the DePaul basketball game, and we talked. I saw him a few weeks later, and...well, I was obviously having deep doubts about my engagement.

We went on a date on Saturday, and I broke up with my fiancé on Sunday. We dated four years, growing with each other, until I decided, this is the person I have to marry.

We married in Yellow Springs at St. Paul’s. Last week on Feb. 6 we celebrated the anniversary of our first date 26 years ago. He’s the love of my life.

Gregory Simms and Willetta Peavey: We met four years ago at a dance club in Cincinnati. My oldest friend Cindy had just broken up with the love of her life, and she told me that Alice Walker said the only way through pain was through dance. I was divorced, and I wasn’t trying to get into trouble, but she drug me to Cincinnati. It was 1 a.m. and Gregory and I had danced two dances just before closing time. He asked for my number and I gave it to him on a napkin. When he walked away I said, I’m going to marry him.

We were both taking care of our parents, we were both just divorced, and we both loved being married. He was just so kind and articulate and cute! Two years later we got engaged, but because our parents were so sick we kept putting off the marriage. He still divides his time between his 86-year-old mother, who needs ‘round the clock care in Cincinnati, and here, where I am with my two kids, Jessica and Michael.

Contact: lheaton@ysnews.com