Sleepless in Seattle + Oprah = True Love for Northwest Couple

How does an artistic free spirit from California and a logical engineer from the Northwest meet and fall in love? Courtesy of the Oprah Winfrey Show, thank you.

The year was 1993 and Sleepless in Seattle was a blockbuster hit movie. It starred Tom Hanks as a recently widowed man whose 8-year-old son calls a radio talk show to help find his father a wife. Meg Ryan plays one of thousands of women who were so moved by the grieving man’s story that they write the radio station asking to meet him.

Later that same year, triggered by the movie’s success, the Oprah Winfrey Show asked five men from the Seattle area who had lost their wives to cancer to tell their stories. Oprah invited women viewers to write in asking to meet the men.

It was one of the most popular shows of the season and in a case of life imitating art, the response was overwhelming. Within a week or so, Oprah drove a forklift onto the set carrying thousands upon thousands of letters from women wanting to meet the widowers.

Each of the men chose someone from the mountain of letters to go on a date with, which was filmed for a later Oprah show. None of the dates turned into relationships.

Enter rita ann (small r, small a) of Santa Cruz County, California. She was one of those thousands of women who had written to the men. She noticed Boeing engineer Jim Schwarting right away because he was very tall (6’4”) and his career sounded interesting. But mostly she was moved by the story he told of his late wife. She was both moved and daunted; Jim’s wife was a doctor (psychiatrist) who played ten musical instruments.

“But it isn’t a big risk,” thought rita, “what are the chances he’ll even see my letter?” rita didn’t have many recent photos to include with her letter, but she did have one where she was wearing Groucho Marx glasses. That is the photo the ever-whimsical rita sent.

Jim received an overwhelming 10,000 letters. After his date filmed for the Oprah show, as well as other dates that people kept setting up for him, he had stopped reading through the letters. But then, during his annual Boeing Christmas hiatus, he decided to take another look. He was organizing them into piles – one stack represented those he would send a postcard to and the other stack was for those he would respond to with a letter.

Jim was sorting through the piles of mail when he came across rita’s letter; her Groucho glasses caught his eye. He placed the letter on top of a tall stack he intended to answer with a postcard. Then he left to walk the dog.

When he returned, rita’s letter had fallen from the stack and landed on his computer keyboard. That really is a cute photo, he thought. He could tell she had a sense of humor. He moved her envelope to the top of his tall stack to answer with a letter instead of a postcard. Then he left for dinner.

When he came back, rita’s letter had fallen to his keyboard again.

“It’s a sign,” he said to himself.

Those very words are a recurring theme in the movie, Sleepless in Seattle. It seemed that this relationship was meant to be. Jim sat down then and there and wrote to rita.

“It was kind of a miracle when I got his letter,” says rita. “So much time had passed that I’d forgotten all about it.” But Jim’s letter was wonderful and charming. “Jim is an engineer with the heart of a poet,” she declares. rita was enchanted and responded right away.

“We met in March of 1994 in Seattle,” she says. They had spent a lot of time talking on the phone and exchanging letters, so they felt they could be friends before they ever met. “Our first meeting was easy.”

Their whirlwind courtship consisted of rita flying to Seattle for long weekends and Jim flying to stay with her in Capitola, California.

“When he first came down in April 2014, we spent the first evening with 25 or more of my friends. Everyone was checking the guy out,” says rita. “Saturday, we went to my brother’s house, where my mother was living. And on Sunday, I had about 30 people at my house to meet him.”

They’d had a full few days, but on Monday rita wanted to visit her mother again in Oakland, as was her practice. Jim agreed. “We were sitting at the dining room table with my 83-year-old mom, when all of a sudden Jim said to my mother, 'Mrs. Landmann, what would you say if I asked your daughter to marry me?’ Without skipping a beat, Mom’s response was, ‘If she doesn’t say yes, I will!’

“After that, we had our long drive back to Capitola. I put in a cassette tape; it was all about living life to the fullest, taking risks and being in the moment…wonderful stories about celebrating life. I’m driving down the back mountain road and Jim said, ‘I guess I need to take a risk. Will you marry me?’

“Wait a minute,” said the plucky rita, who was still driving on the mountain road. “You said if you ever proposed, you would get down on one knee. I’ll wait for that.”

When they got to town they went directly to the jewelry store and asked the owner, Harry, if he would be a witness. “Jim got down on his knee and proposed. Then we went around the corner to my best friend’s store and announced that we were engaged!”

The couple was married in Santa Cruz on November 4, 1994 – the one year anniversary of the airing of that fateful Oprah show.

In a tribute to the Groucho Marx glasses that were a key to the Schwarting’s first meeting, wedding guests wore Groucho glasses after the vows

The wedding is a story all unto itself. Their children stood for them (rita has a son, Jim a daughter). Unbeknownst to Jim, rita brought Groucho glasses for the entire wedding party. After the couple said their vows they turned to face the audience to behold a sea of Groucho glasses, which everyone wore during the song The First Time Ever I Saw Your Face.

Like any couple, the Schwarting’s have had their shares of adjustments. “It wasn’t all a walk in the park,” said rita. “But we walked it together.”

When she moved, rita left behind her own business and a community of friends. Luckily, her mother moved in with the couple shortly after they were married, and her son moved to the area six months later. She even has a cousin in Bellevue she never knew existed. Having family nearby is important to rita. “It’s a cool thing because growing up I didn’t have any extended family,” says rita, whose parents were immigrants and who lost family members in the Holocaust. “Having this sudden family has been just wonderful.”

rita and Jim continue to happily share their lives together, engaged in the community, surrounded by children, grandchildren, family and friends. They are surrounded by love.

The story of rita and Jim is the stuff of fairy tales … or at the very least a good romantic comedy!