Since Valentine’s Day is only three days away, The Park Record asked some well-known Park City love birds how they found each other.
The couples interviewed are Blue Boar Innkeepers Jay and Sandy Niederhauser, Red Banjo Pizza owners Tana Toly and David Ireland, musicians Rich Wyman and Lisa Needham and Utah Conservatory’s Sheraye Dallof and Aaron Mitchell.
Romance is Jay and Sandy Niederhauser’s life.
Of the four couples featured here, the Niederhausers have been married the longest. They recently celebrated their 52nd wedding anniversary and have worked together at the Blue Boar Inn in Midway since its inception in 1999.
As innkeepers, the two are experts at helping other couples celebrate romance.
In fact, when the Niederhausers celebrated their own 50th anniversary, Jay decided to create an anniversary database on anniversary couples.
“I have every couple who visit the inn fill out a card,” he said. “A month before their anniversary, I send them little special reminder. Every day, especially on weekends, we have at least one couple celebrating their anniversary at the inn. The requests range from extravagant to the simple. In fact, one request we had was for a bottle of milk, two glasses and a package of Oreo cookies.”
Niederhauser met Sandy while cruising Sugarhouse on Easter Sunday in the 1950s.
“My friend John and I had the top down on the convertible and went on a Sunday drive,” he remembered. “We see these two girls who looked like they were waiting for a bus, so we drove around the block, stopped and struck up a conversation.”
The girls were headed to the Easter Parade, and ended up spending the day with the boys.
“We told them we would take them downtown instead of them taking the bus,” Niederhauser said. “One thing lead to another and we spent the whole day cruising Salt Lake.”
Other dates followed.
“We danced in all the big dance areas like Lagoon, Saltair and the Avalon Ballroom,” Niederhauser said. “The ’50s couldn’t have been a better time. The movies were fabulous. The big bands included Stan Kenton and the more romantic singers were Nat “King” Cole and Johnny Ray. These people would perform at Lagoon and Saltair.”
Niederhauser proposed to Sandy in 1958.
“We were out on a cruise in the convertible and ended up in front of the Utah State Capitol looking at the lights,” he said. “I had arranged with a jeweler to set me up with an engagement ring. As we were looking out over Salt Lake Valley to the south, I thought it was an ideal time to give her this ring.”
Although they didn’t have a lot of money, the couple spent their honeymoon in Las Vegas, Nev.
Since then the Niederhausers have hiked, skied and danced through their life together.
“When I met Jay I thought he was fun and had a nice convertible,” Sandy Niederhauser said. “We’ve had a wonderful life together. We’ve traveled all over and have done so many things. I have no regrets.”
Tana Toly and Dave Ireland kept dating thanks to a restaurant tip.
“On our first date, when he went to the restroom, I checked to see how much he tipped,” Toly said. “If he didn’t tip well, I wasn’t going to go on a second date, because I had grown up in a restaurant. But he had tipped 20 percent and I knew it from that moment on, he was different.”
Then Ireland took Toly to see the torture-porn flick “Saw II.”
“I like horror movies, what can I say?” Ireland said. “Maybe it was one of those tests. If you can sit through a horror movie with me, you’re in good shape.”
“The funny thing was I still liked him afterwards,” Toly said.
The two met at a company party five and a half years ago.
“We were both at college at the University of Utah, and both worked for different Breeze Ski Shops,” Toly said. “I worked at the one up in Park City and he worked at the one in Salt Lake.”
“We spent the day at the Breeze party together,” Ireland said. “After that we didn’t talk for about a week, and then one day she called me up and we went to a crappy horror movie.”
Ireland proposed to Toly during a trip to LaJolla, Calif.
“I had a friend arrange a hotel room and I filled 20-plus balloons with notes of things I loved about her,” Ireland said. “She’d pop them and read the notes.”
Nearly a half hour after the last balloon popped, room service brought in a heart made of chocolate covered strawberries.
The ring was in the center.
“After nearly 20 minutes of nothing, and him saying, ‘That’s it,’ I felt kind of stupid because I was expecting it,” Toly said. “Then the doorbell rang and the champagne and the strawberries came and I was ecstatic.”
“Then we called everyone we knew and went for a swim,” Ireland said.
The two were married at the top of Pay Day lift at Park City Mountain Resort two and a half years ago.
“Everyone took the Alpine slide down and we had our reception at the Legacy Lodge,” Toly said. “Then we went to Tahiti and Bora Bora for our honeymoon.”
Even today, the couple tries to take one big vacation a year away from their duties at Red Banjo Pizza, which was opened by Toly’s grandmother in 1962.
“We make sure we do one big thing together,” Ireland said. “Since we don’t have kids we want to spend this time together.”
A premonition led Lisa Needham to Rich Wyman in New York City.
More than 23 years ago, Needham, who now owns the Park City Yoga Studio, was trying to be an actress and Wyman, as he has been for most of his life, was a musician, Needham said.
“I remember I had premonition that I had to go to a party in Hell’s Kitchen that I was invited to because I was going to meet the person I was going to spend the rest of my life with,” Needham said. “I was invited by a friend because there were going to be a lot of other actors in attendance. But that was the last thing I wanted to do.”
Needham just had her wisdom teeth extracted. She had stitches in her mouth, couldn’t brush her teeth and had to talk through a clenched jaw.
“Also, someone had given me a really bad haircut, so I wasn’t going to go,” she said.
Nedham attended the party on the condition she would meet a photographer or a musician.
“I thought if I meet the person I’m going to spend the rest of my life with it will either have to be a photographer, who can take pictures of me, or a musician, who can write music for me,” Needham said.
She situated herself to watch the door.
“There were models and guys without tops on coming in,” she laughed. “And then Richard came in and he had ringlets all the way down to his elbows.”
“I immediately forgot my intention, because he looked like a friend of mine,” she said. “He walked across the room and by the time he caught my eye, I said, ‘Do I know you?'”
They spent the next hour talking before Wyman had to answer a phone call.
“He left for about half an hour and I figured he was gone and I started to leave,” Needham said. “He came running back up and said, ‘I’m so sorry. I got caught up on the phone. Can you give me your information for my mailing list?”
Their first date was seeing “My Life as a Dog.” A month later they moved in together.
“I moved to New York City as soon as I graduated high school,” Wyman remembered. “Five years later my old high school girlfriend moved to West 82nd Street and invited me to her place for a party on August 24, 1987.”
She was on the soap opera “Ryan’s Hope.”
“I had this attitude about soap opera actors,” Wyman said. “I walked into the party with a chip on my shoulder and roamed the apartment until I saw Lisa sitting on a couch in the far corner, looking more like a real person than anyone else there. I felt like she was a very cool person, someone who I really liked on the inside.
“She moved in with me the following year and we have never been apart.”
After Needham propssed to Wyman on Sadie Hawkins Day, the two were married at the top of Guardsman Pass, and spent their honeymoon mountain biking in Sun Valley, Idaho.
“We got married on July 31, 1993, but I consider Aug. 24, 1987, our anniversary,” Wyman said.
Friends got Sheraye Dallof Mitchell and Aaron Mitchell together.
Of these couples, the Mitchells have been married the shortest amount of time one year and three months.
Their first meeting was a little rough.
“We met through mutual friends at a party,” Aaron Mitchell said. “She had fallen down the stairs and when I picked her up to carry her up the stairs, I bumped her head, hard.”
“I was crying because I was hurt,” Sheraye Dallof Mitchell remembered. “Also, someone at the party had a Polaroid camera and I didn’t want my picture taken, so I was freaking out.”
Unfortunately, the person took the picture. Fortunately, she gave it to Mitchell.
“On our second date, I brought her the Polaroid,” he said.
“I said, ‘Thanks,’ and ripped it up,” Dallof Mitchell said. “And after that, we were inseparable.”
Still, it took a while for the two to go on a first date.
“I didn’t know he was trying, because he never asked me,” Dallof Mitchell said. “We would see each other at places and he would jump out and say, ‘Hi,’ and I would say, ‘Hey,’ but that was it.”
“So a friend of hers told me to be more aggressive and ask her out,” Mitchell said. “So I did and we went to the Macaroni Grill. For our second date we went to Tsunami.”
Mitchell didn’t know his future bride-to-be didn’t like Italian food or sushi.
“I was striking out from Day One,” he said with a laugh.
However, Dallof Mitchell did try the sushi.
“I tried it just for him, and no one has ever gotten me to do that before,” she said.
When it came time for Mitchell to propose, he had a plan.
“I sent her to get her nails done and said we’re going out to eat and have a nice evening,” he said.
“We went to a restaurant where our friend waited tables,” Dallof Mitchell said.
“He set us in a corner and we had a good bottle of champagne.”
While the two ate, Dallof Mitchell’s sister decorated their house.
“When we walked in, she had put roses and rose petals all over and a lit a lot of candles,” Dallof Mitchell said. “And he proposed.”
The Mitchells were married in and spent their honeymoon in Cancun.
“I try to keep it in my head that, while he’s my husband, he’s also my boyfriend,” Dallof said. “I don’t’ want to ever get lazy and think since he’s my husband, he’s never going to leave. I want him to be my boyfriend, because there is still that excitement.”
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