JANUARY 11 • 2024 | 19

They saw Dr. Zhivago.
“I remember this date felt very 
different than all the other dates 
I had gone on before … It felt 
exciting and promising. She was 
cute, she laughed at most of my 
jokes, and she was not afraid to 
express herself with just the right 
amount of assertiveness,
” Jeff 
said. 
He also fondly remembers 
them belting out “Barbara Ann” 
together along with his AM car 
radio. “Most importantly, she 
seemed to like me, too!”
But when Jeff called to invite 
Leslie out again, Leslie admitted 
she already had another date 
scheduled. 
“That threw me for a loop,
” 
Jeff said. “But I could take a hint. 
Clearly, she wasn’t interested … I 
was hurt and embarrassed. I told 
my friends, who had no words of 
wisdom to share. In retrospect, 
they may not have been the most 
experienced experts on dating I 
could have found!”

A week later, Jeff received a 
letter in the mail from Leslie. 
She’
d written that she had truly 
enjoyed their date, was con-
cerned that he had gotten the 
wrong idea about her pre-
arranged date and that she hoped 
Jeff would call again. 
“I was knocked over, like I had 
been struck by lightning! I had 

read her all wrong! I didn’t wait 
to talk to my brilliant friends or 
do anything else to slow myself 
down,
” Jeff said. He raced to his 
parents’ bedroom and called 
Leslie immediately. 
“When I look back, I realize 
that without that letter, every-
thing in our lives would have 
been different,
” he said. “I was 

highly sensitive to rejection and 
ambivalent about commitment. 
If not for that letter, I would like-
ly never have called her again.
”
But she did write that letter, 
so he did call … And they 
started dating, fell in love and 
got married in May 1971 at 
Beth Shalom. They have three 
children — Adina, Dan and 
Jon — and six grandchildren. 
The couple lives in Farmington 
Hills and are members of Temple 
Israel.
A relic of the past and a 
testament to their love story, 
Leslie’s beloved guitar, the one 
she played when she and Jeff first 
met almost 60 years ago, still sits 
in their den. 
As for that letter, Jeff said, “I 
don’t have it anymore, but the 
memory of it is intact in my 
heart forever.
” 

This column will appear biweekly. If you’d 

like to share your “meet-cute” story, 

please email burstynwithjoy@hotmail.com.

The London family

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email egordon@jfsdetroit.org or call 248.970.2779

Pre-registration required. (Must be a family caregiver to register.)

