Relationship

How we met: ‘I just wanted to sit in the hot tub. Then this guy got in and tried to chat me up’


Rick Wolter was living in a retirement community in California when he and Gwendolyn met. Then in his mid-40s, he was several decades younger than most of the residents, but was allowed to stay there while he looked after his aunt’s apartment. There were, he says with a laugh, “these older women who had designs on me”.

He liked to have a daily swim. “He got to know a lot of the ladies who swam,” says Gwendolyn, with the hint of a raised eyebrow. Rick laughs. One of them was Gwendolyn’s aunt, and she would save a lane for him.

In June 1998, Gwendolyn, a New York-born concert pianist living in London, was on the US west coast to visit her mother and father. She was jetlagged “and kind of cranky” when she went to the pool. “He saw me first because I was standing by the edge, arguing with my aunt,” she says. Rick adds: “She was trying to get you to come in to swim.” “And I didn’t want to swim laps,” says Gwendolyn. “I just wanted to go sit in the hot tub. I was enjoying some quiet time and then this guy got in.” She looks at Rick. “And he tried to …”

Rick smiles: “Chat you up.” He had overheard their conversation. “And I thought: ‘I’m going to go and sit in the Jacuzzi because she looks very attractive and she has a bit of spirit.’”

“I said: ‘I’m terribly sorry. I’m not trying to be rude, but please go away,’” remembers Gwendolyn. “He was very accommodating and stopped talking. Then, two minutes later, this other guy got in.” He must have had some bank notes in his shorts pocket, and lost them in the hot tub, because after he got out, and the water jets started, “all the money started rolling to the surface,” says Gwendolyn. “Rick and I were grabbing it. That broke the ice. Then I found out Rick was an archaeologist and I had just been to Egypt, so we had a lot to talk about.”

There was only about $8 in the notes they retrieved; they looked for the man to give it back, but he had gone. “Didn’t we do something with that money? I thought we were going to get a six-pack or something,” says Gwendolyn. They don’t remember.

They spent the next few days together. “I thought he was a nice guy,” she says, “but I figured there was no chance we’d have a relationship because I live in London and he lives in California in a retirement home.” But Rick travelled to the UK to visit Gwendolyn a couple of weeks after she returned and they went on a trip to France. “I think we started feeling: ‘This is kind of nice’,” says Gwendolyn. It felt “very comfortable”, Rick agrees.

They saw each other every month for the first four months, including when Rick accompanied Gwendolyn back to London after her father died. Then they had to decide, if they were going to be together, who would be the one to move. Rick came to London to see if he could get a job as an archaeologist but, on a volunteer dig one day – when the ground was so cold he broke his trowel – he came back to Gwendolyn’s flat “looking like a popsicle. He just stood there and said: ‘I love you but I can’t do this.’”

She moved back to the US about a year after they met, and they married a few months later. Although they say they are opposites, “seven-eighths of the time, it totally works. And then one-eighth of the time, we butt heads,” says Rick. Gwendolyn says: “I really wanted someone who was kind and who could include my mother. At that point, she was a widow – she only recently passed away at 100 – and we took care of Rick’s side of the family, too, so for the duration of the 21 years we’ve been together, we’ve taken care of people. I don’t think you would find that in just anybody.”

He had been good-natured when Gwendolyn asked him to leave her alone in the hot tub more than 20 years ago. “I went: ‘Oh well’,” he says. Gwendolyn smiles. “He’s a California guy – he’d just go on to somebody else.” “Oh,” he says, in mock horror. “You never said that before.” Gwendolyn turns to him. “You had many girlfriends by the time we married. They all came to the wedding.”

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