A love story

 43 years ago today I stood at a snack bar at Tan Tara Resort in Missouri. It was the start of a love story that would make a great Hallmark movie.

Opening Scenes 

A woman in her early 30s stands at a snack bar during a break of a CUES Marketing Conference for credit union managers. She is from Boston. A young man approaches. The coup de foudre shocks her. He orders a chocolate milk shake and looking at her healthy drink, adds an apple. It is apparent that his reaction is the same as hers.

They spend the rest of the conference together, sometimes with other attendees, sometimes going off on after session activities like horse back riding. At the swimming pool the CEO of a service credit union is in the pool with them. He will later offer the woman a job in Germany which she will turn down. The man and woman go off to a local restaurant and he is horrified when the woman orders catfish. 

His upstate New York life is very different from hers in Boston.

During the time together they talk about everything from privacy for credit union members' monthly statement to a story about the little boy, happy to be in a barn because with all that horse shit, he thinks there has to be a pony.

As they talk about their lives, it is obvious that nothing can happen. They each have family responsibilities, a daughter each. The idea that they are a conference cliché runs through the young woman's mind and she accepts it.

Airplane scene

The conference ends, but a storm has blocked the roads back to St. Louis airport. They hire a tiny airplane. The pilot has to arrange them and their luggage carefully to make sure there is balance. They fly low over the trees which are changing from green to fall colors.

Many short scenes

They stay in touch. The young man's new job takes him to Boston every so often. They go to dinner, walk the Freedom Trail, go to a show staring Lauren Bacall. 

The phone call

The young woman calls the young man, now both are a little less young, to say she's moving to Europe.

Many short scenes

We see the man with his family, building his career, moving to Texas. She is adapting to living in Switzerland. It is like the other one never existed. They think of each other from time to time but pre-internet there's no way to contact each other. 24 years go by.

The discovery

He sees her byline on a story in Credit Union News. She is their international correspondent. She's on LinkedIn. He is no longer involved in credit unions. She has her own financial news service. 

Another conference

He knows she lives in Geneva from information gleaned from the internet. He has to attend a conference there. He takes a chance and asks via LinkedIn if she would like to have a coffee with him.

She is shocked to see his name pop up. Originally she had been planning to be in the South of France where she spends most of the time. She calls him. He takes her call on the conference room floor.

Starbucks/Café du Soleil

When she enters Starbucks, where they agreed to meet, she recognizes him from the back. She invites him to the Café du Soleil for a very Swiss fondue. They share as much as they can before like Cinderella she has to leave. She isn't worried about losing her glass slipper, but the bus, not a pumpkin, that she needs to catch to get home, will stop running.

The next few weeks

Show different phone conversations, e-mails. Little by little they reveal the feelings they had hidden long ago. 

South of France

She invited him to her Nest, a studio along the Med. "How will your friends know we're together?" he asked. "When I hold you hand," she tells him. The vacation ends too quickly. He heads back to the States, she heads back to Geneva.

He decides he has to move to France to be with her. She finds it a great idea.

They hold a commitment ceremony a year later with 40 friends from 7 countries witnessing. Two years they will have a civil ceremony to make the marriage legal.

The closing credits of the movie followed by the words:

THEY LIVED HAPPILY EVER AFTER