Local couples tell how they were struck by Cupid’s bow
Flirtation at café led to phone call
NEARING THEIR 33rd anniversary are Luis and Carol Fondevila.
Luis and Carol Fondevila of Windsor Square met rather serendipitously at a westside neighborhood bistro. She was having dinner with a girlfriend, while he was having dinner with an ex-roommate at the next table. The normal flirting ensued, and Luis hedged his bets by obtaining both Carol’s and her girlfriend’s phone numbers! As it turned out, he asked Carol out first, and the rest is history.
“Luis and I will celebrate our 33rd wedding anniversary this year. We have shared a very blessed life, and we have one lovely daughter, Francesca, with whom we are very close.
“In addition to our love and respect for one another, are our shared values and the dreams that we have built and fulfilled together. Family values are of the upmost importance to us and have kept us together through the rocky times.
Law office setting for Holz meet-up
PLAYING CUPID for friend didn’t work out for Therese Holz, here with Steve at Wilshire Country Club in 1981.
Therese Wolfe decided to become a paralegal to see if she wanted to become a lawyer. A graduate of USC, she went on to study at the University of West Los Angeles to become a paralegal. She was hired to work in the litigation department of Musick, Peeler, Garrett. She thought one of the lawyers looked like he and her girlfriend might make a cute couple, so she tried to fix them up. Instead, Steve Holz preferred to go out with Therese (“even though he criticized my work”).
They dated for 16 months before tying the knot 31 years ago. And she gave up the idea of becoming an attorney.
Their first home was in Laguna while Steve was in the firm’s Newport Beach office. The couple raised their two sons and a daughter, all in their 20s, in Hancock Park.
Ultimatum results in marriage plans
A folk dance party in New York City is where Judy Kirshner and Gary Gilbert first met.
He was an art history major from Rutgers University, and she had just gotten her second master’s degree, this one in nursing. “We had no thoughts of anything serious happening, the goal that night was just a little fun. Or maybe even a lot of fun.”
DANCING brought Judy and Gary Gilbert together.
And it was a lot of fun, and more, and eventually the couple moved in together.
Two years later, Gary awoke to a simple ultimatum. “It’s time to get married. Or else …” Cut to an intimate ceremony in their apartment in 1980 with Rabbi Karen Fox officiating her first wedding. (Rabbi Fox currently is on staff at Wilshire Boulevard Temple).
Soon after that, Gary convinced Judy to come to Los Angeles so he could give writing a try. She reluctantly negotiated a six-month trial period. And now, 30 years later, and 30 scripts later, it looks like they’re staying.
The Gilberts, Windsor Square residents, are the parents of four daughters.
Friendship evolved into a romance
He was a handsome young actor, but she was an engaged young woman when Joane Henneberger and Wiley Pickett first met at a party. A few months later, Joane broke off the engagement, (“he was the wrong man for me”) and began a friendship with Wiley.
When Joane felt she liked Wiley more than just as a friend, she managed to get a date with him.
WAYFARER’S CHAPEL was scene of Pickett wedding.
“I told him that, at the last minute, my friend couldn’t attend a concert we were going to, so I had an extra ticket to hear Randy Travis. That was our first real date, but it took about four more years of intermittent dating before the word ‘marriage’ came up.”
The couple said their vows at the Wayfarers Chapel in Palos Verdes 20 years ago, the same year they bought a fixer-upper.
Joane is proprietor of Pickett Fences, Wiley continues his acting career and 13-year-old Wiley Jr. is a seventh grader at St. Brendan’s School.
Category: People