Valentine's Day Special: Love Stories from Arrival Stories
Crossing continents, oceans and national borders isn't the only journey taken by the Los Angeles migrants and immigrants who populate the weekly Arrival Stories series.
Many of our participants tell of the journey their hearts take, too. So on this Valentine's Day, enjoy this round-up of some of the courtships recently chronicled by this ongoing series. Please click through the links to read the complete stories.
- Gabrielle Garcia's parents were born in Durango, Mexico, but didn't meet each other until they both lived in Lincoln Heights and attended the same school. One day, Garcia says, her mom wore a yellow dress, her dad was smitten, and the rest, Garcia says, is -- "bada bing bada boom" -- history.
- English-born journalist Michael Miller and his New York-born wife Judy weren't quite on the same page when they arrived in Los Angeles, but during a walk in the Baldwin Hills, everything changed.
- College student ClaudiaCarcamo's father is from El Salvador and her mother is from Mexico. The pair met in North Hollywood at... a Salvadoran restaurant owned and operated by Mexicans.
- Playwright and acting teacher Stacey Martino and actor Rene Rivera are married and have two children. (See their family portrait.) When Arrival Stories caught up with the couple, he was starring in a work that she wrote.
- Roxanne Steinberg and Oguri met in 1987 in Hakushu, Japan, in Yamanashi prefecture, on a farm called Body Weather Farm. Steinberg's grandparents also came together in a remarkable manner -- after dating briefly in New York, the soon-to-be-couple met again in L.A. when he was offering to sell...yes... rattlesnakes to a film studio where she worked.
- Dublab co-founder Alejandro Cohen, from Argentina, met his wife in Chinatown, at Hop Louie.
- Conceptual artist and writer Marjan Vayghan travels regularly back and forth between Tehran and Los Angeles. But the first summer she spent in L.A., back in 2001, is when she met and fell in love with her partner of ten years, Jesse.
And avant garde icon Rachel Rosenthal's life is fit for an epic or an opera. No matter how many incredible people the octogenarian has met over the years, Rosenthal says that her true soul mate was her late, beloved cat, DiBiDi. Photo: A woman being tested by a nurse on a "Kissograph" -- a telegraph for long distance smooching. Photo courtesy of The Los Angeles Public Library.