Last week, we invited our readers to share the blind date, a-ha moment, or meet-cute that led them to the love of their lives. In honor of Valentine’s Day, here are a dozen stories of love on the North Shore:
From West Lynn to East Lynn, love knows no bounds
My name is Dick Donahue. I’m a West Lynn boy and my wife, Andrea (Curtis) is an East Lynn girl.
In 1964, I worked at Bill’s Supply on Andrew Street and she worked at Nandee’s Restaurant on Market Street. I went in there one day for coffee for the boys and she waited on me. It was love at first sight for me. I went for coffee 10 times that day, and I don’t even like coffee!
That was the start and we started dating soon after. A year later, the Vietnam War was on and my best buddy and I thought we should do something, so we joined the Marines.
Then I starting worrying, what is my girlfriend gonna think of that? She was OK with me enlisting for a while, but it wasn’t going to last so we eloped. Her dad wasn’t too happy with that and the military police at the base in North Carolina where I was stationed weren’t either.
They took me to the brig for “safekeeping” and sergeant of the guard took Andrea home to her family. Well, Mrs. Curtis thought her daughter was in love and said, “Let them get married, as long as she comes home to finish school.”
I went off to Vietnam and I was lucky to make it back. Being a good Christian, I married her again at St Joseph’s Church on Union Street to make her father happy. This July will be our 51st anniversary.
Richard and Andrea Donahue, Lynn
Love in the bayou
Back in 1980, while living in Thibodaux, Louisiana, my roommate came home with a stranded Nahanter whose car had broken down. He had asked to use our landline. Back then cell phones didn’t exist. While waiting for help to arrive, he and I exchanged stories while sitting on a cypress swing under a pecan tree. I shared that I had just broken up with my fiancé of seven years and was still in love and waiting for him to grow up. He made it clear from the start that he was a confirmed bachelor and president of the woman haters club. He had come to Louisiana to make some quick cash working offshore in order to pay off his ex-wife and start up his own business. Before leaving, he gave me some sage advice which I ultimately took… “date other people.”
The following week I received an unexpected phone call from him asking me to dinner! When I asked him how he had gotten my number (knowing we hadn’t exchanged numbers and he didn’t even know my last name), he replied with a laugh that he had taken it off of my phone the week before. We continued to date for a few months until at last it was time to say goodbye. I gave him a ride to the airport and wished him luck, but was sad to see my yankee go. I never expected to see him again.
A week later I received a letter in the mail from Nahant written on a Tides placemat. He had written me the night he returned home to tell me that he missed me already. We stayed in contact from that moment on, and were engaged six years later. We are still happily married today, and blessed with two beautiful children!
Allura Powlin
A dark and stormy romance
The date was December 11, 1968 – a dark and stormy day. It was also my first day on the job at an insurance company in Boston. My boss brought me around to introduce me to the rest of the staff, and there she was sitting demurely at her desk; her name was Diane. She made me forget about the stormy day. It is said that the way to a man’s heart is through his stomach. Well I reversed that a little. A few days later I gave her a dish of chocolate chip cookies and that was it. After we got to know each other a little better, we started dating in early 1969. We will celebrate our 47th wedding anniversary in August.
William Reilly, Lynn
The spotted rain hat did it
I met my future wife because a friend of mine wanted to date a girl in high school. Her mother wouldn’t let her go on a date alone, so I was asked to go with him and a friend of hers. We met before the date on the corner of my street. I can still remember how she looked, it was misting out and she had an English High jacket on, with a black and white spotted rain hat. I was immediately attracted to her and we began dating. My friend and the other girl didn’t last, but I continued dating my girl through college until I asked her to marry me in my sophomore year, 1970. We married in my senior year, 1972 and now have two daughters and five grandchildren. I can’t imagine my life any better than it has been all these years.
Gerry Fallon, Lynn
The best dollar she ever spent
The way Sue tells it, she had been to a friend’s son’s baseball game and then a concert on the Commons and got a nasty sunburn in the process. On the way home her friends asked her if she wanted to go to karaoke at Fantasy Island. She thought of her options of being home miserable or go to karaoke. She chose karaoke.
I was out for my usual Saturday night of karaoke with my friends. At one point in the night, my friend Roger was up singing “Play that Funky Music White Boy,” and dancing around to entertain the people in the bar. As he danced, I was laughing so hard at the dance I thought that I had to play a practical joke on him and I started going table to table to see if a girl who didn’t know Roger would stuff a dollar bill down his shirt while he danced. I went to a table where Sue was icing her legs down from the sunburn and asked. Sue’s friend went up and put that dollar right in Roger’s shirt. I was laughing hard while I walked up next to sing my song. While I was up, I noticed Wendy (Sue’s friend) talking to Roger and I knew that the jig was up and I thought that joke didn’t last too long. When I had finished singing I walked back to our table to face the “music” with Roger.
Wendy said that her husband was jealous so she had to tell him that I had put her up to it but her friend (Sue) thought I was gorgeous (to this day, Sue said she told her I was cute, but I choose to believe Wendy on this one). I went over to talk to her and we had a great evening talking and added a dance or two. When Fantasy Island closed we went back to Wendy’s and talked until the Sunday paper was delivered.
Soon after we went on our first date. Three months later we were engaged and married a year after that. Twenty years later we are still married and I think that was the best dollar I ever spent.
Scott Michaud, Lynn
The love of her life
I met the “love of my life” about 60 years ago. I was ice skating with a younger sister on a pond behind my house. I was a senior in high school at the time. He was standing on the shore, watching me and he thought she was my daughter (She is about 12 years younger).
We must have formed a relationship then, talked and made a date. He was 18 and was working. At that time, he didn’t have a driver’s license (I had gotten my license the year before). He lived about ten miles away. However, we soon started dating. He must have been smitten because he came to my house any way he could, even by thumbing a ride (Something you don’t see now-a-days).
After graduating from high school, I was enrolled in a teacher’s college in a city about 5 miles from me. I encouraged him to enroll in the army and about a year later he was sent to Italy. Having spent 3 years there he was released and went home. We resumed a relationship when he came home and later I graduated college and began teaching elementary school.
A couple of years later we planned a wedding. It was at the end of winter, but it was a beautiful day. We didn’t have a honeymoon then, but planned one for the next summer. Things went along well and two years later we had our first daughter. I was so surprised because she was a redhead and there were none in either of our families. I was a blonde at the time and her father was a brunette. (She is 51 now, is married, has two children and is a corporate lawyer.)
Because our family was now growing, my mother-in-law helped us buy a house. Two years later we had our second daughter who turned out to be a blonde. Today, she is a deputy sheriff at the local jail, is married and has two children also.
My husband and I will have been married for almost 54 years. I don’t know where those years have gone, but so far it’s been a good ride. Hopefully, we’ll continue to be well and enjoy the latter part of our life together here on earth.
Joyce Piwonski, Danvers
A love bribe
Our story begins back in January 1982 in the halls of the old United Shoe building in Beverly at the North Shore Regional Vocational High School. I was a 15 and a half-year-old sophomore from Manchester, Massachusetts and he was a 19 year-old post graduate (returning to complete necessary hours in his trade) from Swampscott.
My friend at the time was asked out on a date by a senior and she would only agree to go out with him if he found me a date as well. He reluctantly searched and came back advising he didn’t know of anyone. Having seen him with this “taller” thin guy with curly hair, we said what about that guy, his response was, “l’ll ask him.”
Well that tall guy with curly hair agreed (unbeknownst to me at the time, he bribed that guy to go out with me. My parents had no idea, I was supposed to be at a friends house for the night). We hit it off so well we now had to figure out how to get my parents to agree to let me date him. Lucky for us, he put my parents at ease on our “first” (wink wink) date. Now the other couple only lasted a few dates, but we have stood the test of time. Now I can’t say it was a happily ever after, but it sure is darn close. I married my best friend.
Cheryl M. DiLisio, Lynn
Snacks for my sweetheart
I met my sweetheart almost 28 years ago in high school. I had admired Jim for about eight months before that special day would arrive. I worked in the school’s store and always made sure that I was working the register when he got out of gym class so I could sell him his daily drink after gym class.
Then one day my friends came over to my house after school to get some snacks so we could watch my friend’s boyfriend play in the soccer game. Jim ran cross country and his practice ended so he decided to go watch the game too. This is when Jim saw me and my friends eating our snacks. He was curious where we got them and I told him from my house. He said he would walk me home because it was his birthday and he would be meeting his mother for dinner which was near my house. I thought he was lying but I played along with it. The next day while I was volunteering in the school library, my friend visited me to say that Jim liked me too! I was so excited and said that I liked him too. She told me that he would visit me at my house after cross country practice that day. That day was October 10, 1990 and we have been together ever since making more memories. It really was his birthday that day, but he wasn’t interested in the snacks!
Krissy Kozlosky and Jim Pawlicki, Lynn
The ultimate sweetheart
My sweetheart was actually my childhood sweetheart! Five years ago I was standing in a club and heard this sexy voice calm the crowd from the dance floor and there he was years later my junior high school crush! Couple of days later as I was showing his picture off my mother says is that the little boy from our old neighborhood? I replied no from Jr. High and I was told no 29 years ago you and him were hip to hip always playing house, we were neighbors. Sure enough it was true, from one side of Lynn as kids to the other as adults. We have found each other again. So to my surprise I have secretly loved this man for 29 years and here we are living life together. He was my first kiss and now my forever! He is my ultimate sweetheart!
Cenia Sutton
He found his love
I went through nine years of school with my husband, Mario. We had a good relationship with all our school friends. He quit school in the ninth grade. I completed high school, graduated and went to hairdressing school. I never saw my husband until one day when I was coming home from work and a car pulled up in front of my house, it was Mario. He had just got out of the army and said he was looking for someone to ask what all his friends were doing. We had a nice conversation. One week later he called and ask if he could pick me up from work. He wanted to see his friends. We had a nice conversation about our friends and what everyone was doing. Another week goes by and he called again and ask me to out with him and his friend and girlfriend. A double date. We all had a great time. Literally speaking that was the beginning of our wonderful life.
We married October 7, 1951. After several years of marriage Mario went to hairdressing school and became a hairdresser. Since we had five children it was a good thing he became a hairdresser. We opened our first beauty salon in Somerville in 1960. Mario passed away in November 1997.
One of my sons-in-law always tells me that Mario was not looking for his friends that day, he was looking for me.
Antonette Spinucci
Four-wheeled romance
I met my boyfriend the first week of April 3 years ago. I remember sitting in the emergency room of the hospital one city over from where I live. It was about 2 a.m. I had no money and did not drive and my friends were sleeping, so I asked the hospital to give me a voucher for a cab to go home. When the cab came it was a van and there were 2 other people going in the cab so I sat in the front seat. The driver smiled at me and made small talk. He asked me what I did for work and I told him I work at a supermarket at the deli, and he smiled at me and said I go to that deli all the time. You’re the cute girl who serves me all the time. So I smiled and said yes, that’s me. As he was driving we kept talking to get to know each other and when he dropped off the last customer he started driving towards my place. When he got to my house he looked at me and asked can I kiss you? I looked at him smiled and said with a chuckle. Normally men don’t ask me that, they just go ahead and do it. But you’re so cute for asking and yes you can kiss me. After, we exchanged numbers and have spent every night together since.
Lisa Martori, Lynn
Last train to love
The year was 1978. I was at the Palm Gardens night club in Peabody. A guy by the name of Charley came over to our table and started a conversation with my dad and my girlfriends. On the way home, Dad asked, “Who was your friend?” I said, “My friend? I thought he was your friend.”
I saw Charley at the club a few more times and, eventually, we started dating. A few months later, his niece got married. I was part of the wedding. After the reception, we all went back to the bride’s family’s home. As the guests were leaving at the end of the night, someone yelled out, “Last train to Vine Street.” I immediately yelled back, “I live on Vine Street!” About 15 relatives filed back into the house. I told them where I lived and one of the aunts – Ethel – asked if my nickname was Tina and if my dad drove a furrier truck. I answered “yes” and said my dad worked for Goddard Brothers on Market Street in the fur department.
It turned out Ethel’s mom and dad lived next to us in Lynn and Ethel babysat for me when I was a year old. My parents would visit her folks on Sunday nights and drink home-made Greek wine. I was golden as far as Charley’s family was concerned. We’ve been together for 40 years and are just as happy as when we first met. And it all started when someone yelled out, “Last train to Vine Street – The Brickyard.”
Christine Reddy, Swampscott
