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Michael Garofalo (MG): If there’s one type of story that people never get tired of telling it’s how they met.
Tabinda Sheikh (TFS): Oh I thought you was rude and mean. I said, ‘Oh my God, this guy don’t even say ‘Hi.’ You’re just staring at me! [laughs]
Tariq Sheikh (TMS): Yea, because you was the girl who was in my dreams.
TFS: Yea, but I didn’t have that dream!
MG: And, honestly, here at StoryCorps, we never get tired of hearing them either.
So in this, our Valentine’s Day episode, we’re going to hear a couple of conversations about those first glowing moments of a relationship. I like to think of them as Pepe Le Pew moments.
Pepe Le Pew: And so Mon Cheri, we can do away with the dull preliminaries, and make love right away! [Kissing] We can spend the rest of our lives making love!
MG: But, let’s be real here, things don’t always go so smoothly when that shine wears off. And so we’ll also hear from people whose love stood the test of time.
Scott Grant Smith (SGS): Two days before Thanksgiving in 1997, I said, ”What’s going on?” And then you said, ”I can’t tell you because if I do, you’ll leave me and take the children and I’ll never see them again.” And I said, ”You’d probably better tell me then.” [Laughs] Cause at that…You can’t leave it hanging like that.
MG: Okay you love birds, I’m Michael Garofalo. This is the StoryCorps podcast. Stay with us.
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MG: Welcome back to our Valentine’s Day episode.
Today, it’s pretty common to meet your partner online. I’d bet you can think of at least one couple you know who met through a dating site. In the 21st century, algorithms play matchmaker at least as often as meddling relatives and concerned friends.
But what about more than 50 years ago?
John Matlock (JM): We met through a computer dating service, back in 1964…
MG: That’s John Matlock, and in the early 1960s computer dating was a very new idea. Only a handful of services existed and they used these massive computers, the size of an entire room, to calculate compatibility.
John and his future wife, Carol, both took a chance on this new fangled technology. They filled out questionnaires, put them in the mail, and their answers were fed into the computer on a punch card.
Then, they sat back and waited for a match.
Carol Matlock (CM): You could have paid for just a year or two years. But I paid for life.
JM: I don’t remember how in the heck I joined, but I was kinda lonely.
CM: You were in electronics, which was what I was working in, and that’s how we were matched together.
JM: Yeah. I got a packet from them which included pictures of three different ladies, and yours was one of them. I looked it over. I did call one of the girls. Was not successful in getting a date with her. I don’t know what her case was …
But then I did called, talked to you.
CM: After we had several dates–I called the dating service, and said, “You know, I don’t think you need to send any more calls and he doesn’t want any either.” I said, “I think that we’re for each other.” But you didn’t know I did this….
JM: Uh-huh.
CM: Uh-huh.
JM: I wondered why the well ran dry.
CM: That’s all I cared about, it worked.
You know, I was a single mother. And, um, like most single mothers you go to work, you come home, you take care of your child. I had a son. And so one of the reasons I fell in love with you is because you loved my son. And would be willing to accept him as your son.
JM: I asked to adopt him, and he carries my name.
CM: To me that was the most important thing. And we’ve been together 52 years December of this year.
JM: And who would’ve thought enrollment in a computer dating service
CM: Would lead to this …
JM: Would’ve worked out to that.
CM: We’ve had a wonderful life together.
JM: Yes, we have.
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MG: That’s John and Carol Matlock in Portland, Oregon.
For John and Carol, zeroes and ones made up the language of love.
But for this next couple, there was no common language to help them get started.
In 1989, a woman named Tabinda Peña took a job as a housekeeper in a New York City hotel. She had recently come to the US from the Dominican Republic.
And she caught the eye of a coworker, Tariq Sheikh. He worked at the hotel’s front desk. Tariq is from Pakistan and, like Tabinda, was a recent immigrant himself.
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TFS: Do you remember the first time you saw me?
TMS: You have yellow gloves on and I could not say ‘hello,’ ‘hi,’ nothing.
TFS: Oh I thought you was rude and mean. I said, ‘Oh my God, this guy don’t even say ‘Hi.’ You’re just staring at me! [laughs]
TMS: Yea, because you was the girl who was in my dreams.
TFS: Yea, but I didn’t have that dream!
TMS: You remember, I ask you ‘Do you wanna go with me for coffee?’ You gave me answer after two days!
TFS: Because I didn’t know how to speak English.
TMS: I remember you have a small dictionary in your pocket — a Spanish-to-English. And on the, like, paper,
TFS: –napkin
TMS: Napkin. You write, ‘Ok, yes.’
TFS: Language is not a barrier for the love.
TMS: After that, I bought a yellow cab. I was a driver, you know? One day I say, ‘You know your address where you live? Let me drop you, your home.’ You say, ‘I live in New Jersey.’ Just ‘New Jersey.’
TFS: [laughs]
TMS: I say, ‘Oh my God, today I gonna have a long night!’ When I went there, it was YMCA. I say, ‘Why you don’t tell me you live in YMCA?’ You say, ‘I don’t know YMCA is like a famous thing.’ [laughs]
TFS: I didn’t have no family here. He didn’t have no family here. And when I call back home, and I say, ‘I am in love. I have a–gordito.’ They say, ‘gordito? Chubby man? You don’t like fat men!’
TMS: I was not that fat. Just chubby yes [laughs]
TFS: I know, sweetheart! But for us, this was fat.
TMS: Yup. So, I was working like 72 hours continuously. I was very tired. And I remember, there was a park over there nearby.
TFS: mhmm.
TMS: We went. There was a bench. I put my head on your legs and I slept.
TFS: I don’t even want to move. If I move, he’s going to wake up. It was beautiful. Looking the moon, the stars.
TMS: I woke up morning time. And you was still sitting there and I say, ‘What?!’ That was the moment I fell in love with you.
TFS: Love is a wonderful thing. This is my man! And we’re gonna be married 23 years now.
TMS: She’s telling me 23 years. For me, it’s like yesterday.
MG: Tariq and Tabinda Sheikh in New York.
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MG: OK, we’ve all had this moment. You’re dating someone, it’s been fun, exciting, new, then you realize this is not going to work. It could be a small thing, maybe you’re at dinner and your date says something that gives you pause or it could be something that seems insurmountable, almost Shakespearean, like the stars are aligned against this relationship ever working.
One thing we’ve heard through our Outloud initiative, especially from older folks, who grew up gay or lesbian long before the modern gay rights movement, is that for them, love was often a bittersweet thing, colored by sadness.
75-year-old Glenda Elliott grew up in Mayfield, Georgia. She first fell in love when she was in her 20.
At StoryCorps she sat down with her friend to tell the story of this life-long love that never had the chance to blossom.
Glenda Elliot (GE): Lauree knew how to tease me without my being offended. And there was something about the way she would smile that, you know, I can still see very vividly. She was the first person I really, truly loved. But I grew up in the 40s, in a small, rural community. There were certainly no role models of what it means to love someone of the same sex. So, I didn’t know how to understand that.
My high school sweetheart, he proposed to me. And I thought at that time, that’s what a woman did, she got married. And it didn’t take me very long to realize that I’d made a mistake. So he and I decided to get a divorce.
During all of this time Lauree and I had stayed in touch. I knew that I loved her deeply. She said, “Well I have very strong feelings for you too, but most of all I want to have children.”
She met a man who had asked her to marry him. Then she got pregnant, and she said, ”If it’s a little girl, I’m going to name her after you.” Well, it turned out it was a little boy, and I was relieved. It really would have been excruciatingly painful if she had had a little girl named after me.
Somewhere along the way she said, “If I outlive my husband and you don’t have a partner, perhaps we can grow old together.” And somehow that made it alright.
But then, Lauree got cancer. And she didn’t live very long. And I did not get to see her again.
It didn’t hit me so much until I turned 60 and I began to really think about old age. And this was the time that Lauree and I were gonna have. And it didn’t happen.
There are certain kinds of love that never die. But I don’t regret at all our time together. It is where I learned that I could love and I could be loved in that complete sense of the word.
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MG: That’s Glenda Elliott with her friend Angela Stowe in Birmingham, Alabama.
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MG: One last story. This one begins with a marriage on the ropes.
It was 1997.
Les and Scott Grant Smith had been married for 10 years and Les was the mother of their two daughters.
But, at the time, Les was coming to understand that he was transgender.
Terrified that revealing this would mean losing Scott and their kids, Les decided to keep it a secret, and grew withdrawn and depressed.
Weeks passed where the couple barely spoke. Until finally, Scott confronted his wife.
Scott Grant Smith (SGS): Two days before Thanksgiving in 1997, I said, ”What’s going on?” And then you said, ”I can’t tell you because if I do, you’ll leave me and take the children and I’ll never see them again.” And I said, ”You’d probably better tell me then.” [Laughs] Cause at that…You can’t leave it hanging like that.
Les Grant Smith (LGS): You can’t leave it like that. So, that’s when I told you.
SGS: First thing I remember is that you, you said that you were in the wrong body, that you should be a man.
LGS: And if it had seemed to me that I was going to lose you, and I was gonna lose the kids, I would have said, ”Ok. I’m not transitioning.” But you told me that we’ll work it out.
SGS: Early the next week, you were on the computer and you were researching all of the surgeries [LGS: Surgeries], the hormones [LGS: Hormones] And I just freaked out. It finally occurred to me to ask the question: Should I stay or should I go? And um, my visceral response was: Well, I won’t be better off. Les won’t be better off. And the kids won’t be better off.
LGS: Amanda was 7 at this point, and I explained to her where this was going. And she burst into tears and threw herself onto my lap. And she says, ”Oh please, don’t change into a man. If you have to change into anything, couldn’t it be a cat? [Laughs] And that was not a question I had prepared myself to answer. [SGS: Laughs] I mean, I was kinda stunned. [Laughs]
SGS: So right around that time, you had started transitioning and we just kinda fell out of holding hands when we were walking along the street.
LGS: Spontaneous affection, we couldn’t do it comfortably any more.
SGS: A lot of it was me because it became clear that I would be perceived as gay. But at one point I realized that I didn’t fall in love with a couple of body pieces. I decided this is the person.
LGS: And I was still the same person.
SGS: More so. More like the fun person I remembered from 30-odd years ago, than before the transition.
LGS: Right…right. I mean…it’s just been amazing to watch you. You stuck with it. You persisted. And, every year my respect for you grows and grows. I love you. [SGS:I love you]
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MG: That’s Les and Scott Grant Smith in San Diego, California. When they recorded this interview, they were about to celebrate their 25th wedding anniversary.
Les also interviewed his daughters for StoryCorps and you can hear that conversation on our website, StoryCorps dot org.
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MG: That’s all for this Valentine’s Day episode. These stories were produced by Von Diaz, Liyna Anwar, Nadia Reiman, and me. The podcast is produced by me and Elisheba Ittoop. Find out what music we used in this episode and in every episode on our website… AND don’t forget to review us on itunes or wherever you get your podcasts. And if you want to leave a message for someone you hear on this show give us a ring at 301 744 Talk. that’s 301 744 T-A-L-K.
Until next time, I’m Michael Garofalo. Thanks for listening.
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