Las Valentines, Las Vegas Sun, Feb. 13, 1998

Las Valentines Lisa Ferguson Friday, Feb. 13, 1998 | 9:42 a.m. How did you meet the love of your life? In the spirit of Valentine's Day, the SUN posed this awwww-inspiring question to a handful of prominent Nevada couples, asking that they share treasured, personal memories of the moment they were struck by Cupid's arrow. Turns out, the rich and famous and influential meet like most of the rest of us: By spotting each other across crowded rooms. On blind dates. At work. But mostly, when they least expected it. So grab a hankie and heart-shaped box of chocolates and settle in for nine tales of love in the public eye. Better late than never Susan Anton wanted to focus on her career. At least, that was her intention when she attended an entertainment industry seminar seven years ago in Los Angeles. "I was not looking to find a relationship," says the actress and singer, who since 1994 has starred in "The Great Radio City Spectacular" show, now housed at the Flamingo Hilton hotel-casino. (She headlines alternately with singer Paige O'Hara). About 10 minutes into the workshop, actor Jeff Lester ("Seinfeld," "Baywatch" "Star Trek IV") walked in. "The second I saw him I thought, 'Hel-lo,' " Anton recalls. "He was just so gorgeous." The feeling was mutual, Lester says. "I wasn't sure before I met her what she was going to be like. I really wanted to know who this person was." The pair began dating a month later. One of their first weekend outings was in Las Vegas, where Anton lent her talents to a charity telethon. About a year into the relationship, the topic of marriage was broached -- almost. "I had all the indications that he was going to ask me to marry him on my birthday," Anton recalls. "I said (to Lester), 'Listen, if you're thinking about asking me to marry you ... don't, because I want to say yes and I can't right now.' It's very frightening when you realize everything you've ever wished for is really right there." Not long after the thwarted proposal, Anton recalls, "we were at my house in Beverly Hills. I thought, 'Susan, what are you waiting for?' So I walked into the kitchen (where Lester was) and I said, 'I'm ready if you are,' and he knew what I was talking about." The two were married in 1992. They moved to Las Vegas three years later and founded Twin Towers Entertainment, Inc., which has produced television shows and commercials, including a pilot series for the Sundance Channel. Last year, the couple opened Big Picture Studios, a full-service television and film production studio in Las Vegas. About working together, Lester, who also manages Anton's career, says: "We're both very opinionated and very distinct with the way that we see things and at the same time, we really respect each other's opinions." "I think the greatest gift that we have," Anton adds, "is that we truly enjoy each other's company." Love letters Arkansas, 1929. Oran Gragson was visiting his father when he met Bonnie Henley through a mutual female friend. "I thought he was interested in her, so I didn't give it much thought until he began coming to my house and things kind of changed," she recalls of her then-budding romance with Gragson, who served as Las Vegas' mayor from 1959-75. Every night for a week, he followed her to church and escorted her home after services. Come Saturday, while she and the friend were sipping soda at the local drugstore, Gragson and his pal asked the girls to a party. They picked them up at Henley's home. She started towards the other young man's car, thinking Gragson wanted to cozy up with her friend. "So they stopped and this guy says, 'Well, Oran was planning on being with Bonnie,' and that was a surprise to all of us," she says. "She just had something I liked," Gragson recalls. A five-year-long courtship by mail ensued while he attended school in Texas and worked in Oklahoma, before they married in 1934. They moved to Las Vegas a few years later, where they owned a trio of since-closed secondhand furniture stores and an automotive service station. Husband and wife stayed equally active during Gragson's tenure as mayor, and also throughout Mrs. Gragson's 1982 bout with breast cancer. "I was real busy," she says, "so I didn't have time to think about my illness because I was just going all the time. We'd had our ups and downs, but mostly ups." The couple recently celebrated their 63rd wedding anniversary. "I guess a lot of (marriages) don't last that long, but some last longer," she says. (Their love letters didn't. "I should have kept them," she says.) "I said to (Oran), 'I guess I need a medal,' and he said, 'What do you want to do with it, give it back to me?' " Sneak preview Have you ever seen a dream walking? Michael Berk did -- right outside his office window at Twentieth Century Fox Studios in Hollywood. During the mid-'80s Berk, who is now a Las Vegas resident and the executive producer of the hit series "Baywatch," was set up on a date with Michele Rogers, a former New York actress working in Southern California. Coincidentally, the day before the date, he was chatting with the spouse of the woman who had orchestrated the outing. Berk asked, "'What does this Michele look like?" At that moment, (the man) points out the window of my office and says, 'Well, she looks like this girl who is walking by right now.' " Berk called out his mystery lady's name. "She turned around and looked at me and said, 'Do I know you?' and I said, 'No, but you're going to.' " They proceeded with their not-so-blind date the next night. Following a brief, long-distance relationship -- when Rogers returned to New York to work -- the two were married 11 years ago. While some Hollywood marriages are notoriously rocky, the Berks experienced a shake-up of their own, courtesy of Mother Nature: Their home was destroyed in the 1994 Northridge earthquake. "It was very traumatic," Berk says, "and basically, Michele didn't want to live in California anymore." They moved to Las Vegas the following year. Now, he spends several days a week filming "Baywatch" in Los Angeles while she travels around the globe producing projects for Lotus Pictures, the television and motion picture company they founded here. Mrs. Berk was also recently crowned "Mrs. Nevada" by the Mrs. United States pageant organization, a title she uses to promote the various charities to which the couple is dedicated, including the Las Vegas chapter of the Juvenile Diabetes Foundation. Does she ever worry about her hubby spending so much time around the "Baywatch" babes? "Jealousy has never really been an issue," her husband insists. "She will go off to the Cannes Film Festival by herself and hang out with lots of men there. I'm not going to mess around with anybody on the set of 'Baywatch,' not only because I'm married, but also, it's a very unprofessional thing to do," he says. Despite their separate careers, the Berks also work together on Lotus' film and television projects. "I guess because we argue over scripts or stories or characters," he says, "we don't have to argue personally." Love at first sight Of all the clubs in Pottsville, Penn., she walked into his. It was 1954 and entertainer Pete Barbutti, then 20 years old, was performing his musical-comedy act with his group, The Millionaires, when he spotted Mary Ann. "She had long, blond hair and she looked like Rosemary Clooney," he recalls. "So I walked over to the table and said, 'Will you marry me?' " The 18-year-old factory worker was celebrating her birthday with friends. Her response? "Of course, she said no," Barbutti says. "She's still saying no, but it's too late." Indeed. The couple has been married 43 years. They kept in touch by mail for a year before tying the knot in 1955, and moving to Las Vegas in 1960. Four children and as many grandchildren (another is on the way) later, Mrs. Barbutti remembers their meeting a little differently. "I thought he was strange. Well, he was," she chuckles. "He was hopping around and doing a lot of weird things (on stage), but he was very different than anyone I had ever met." Off-beat humor has been a regular feature of their marriage. "He used to get angry at me and he'd send me checks in my maiden name," she remembers. "Do you know how hard it is to cash checks in your maiden name?" Even in tough times, she says, he was ready with a good laugh -- as when she traveled to Seattle to visit her ailing father. "(Pete) gave me this nicely-wrapped present and asked me not to open it until I was on the plane," she recalls. "I opened it up as were we going down the runway and it was (the book) 'Twenty Greatest Air Disasters of This Century.' So you see what I mean when I say he's funny." Is that what's kept the couple together all these years? "I don't think anyone has the answer to that," Barbutti says. "What works for Couple A doesn't work for B." The missus agrees. "Everybody does something different," she says. "There were some (couples) that we used to hang out with 20 years ago who touched each other constantly, called each other darling, the whole nine yards. I kept thinking, 'If only our marriage was like that. Every one of them is divorced, so I don't know. "Besides," she says, "he cooks good, so that helps." Nevada's first couple Truth be told, Sandy Miller was hardly swept off her feet the first time she met her husband, Nevada Gov. Bob Miller. "Actually, I wasn't real crazy about Bob," she admits. The two were set up on a blind date (dinner at the old El Jardin restaurant on Paradise Road) by mutual friends when he worked in the Clark County district attorney's office and she was a teacher at Ruby Thomas Elementary School. "I thought he was kind of egotistical," Mrs. Miller says, "but to be honest, he probably didn't think much of me either the first date." Still, they gave it another go on a second date. "And things picked up from there," she says. They courted four months before marrying in November of 1973. "He has such a strong moral compass. I hadn't met too many people like that, and still haven't, in my life," Mrs. Miller says. "He's just a real ethical person and he had such a commitment" to family life. "That was something that was real important to me." The couple has three children. "One of the reasons I think that we selected one another is this strong commitment to staying together and establishing a real strong family and making that No. 1. As busy as Bob has been the last 9 1/2 years (that he has been in office), the kids have always come first and the family has always come first and I think that's part of what the success of our relationship is based on." Aside from the normal chaos that accompanies political life, the Millers have faced personal trials, namely when Mrs. Miller discovered a benign breast lump in 1991, and the governor's surgery and recovery from prostate cancer last year. "In sickness and in health," she reminds. Now, the family is preparing to return to "normal life" when the governor's term ends later this year. "The reality is really coming down that we have 11 more months of this and it is finite," Mrs. Miller says. "This is the end of this section of our lives, so what we will do next, I don't know. I think it's real mixed (emotions) for both of us." Comedy couple Marty Allen's not much for remembering dates. But the legendary comic can vividly recall the first time he laid eyes on his beautiful wife, singer Karon Kate Blackwell, at a Los Angeles restaurant (about 14 years ago, he guesses). She was managing the place between gigs and writing music. Before long, Allen was a regular customer. "The next thing I know, my business manager says, 'What kind of food do they have there, because your bills are unbelievable,' " he says. Allen and Blackwell dated about a year. He inquired about her musical talents early on. "She started playing and I heard her sing and I said, 'Oh my god, it's fantastic.' " He invited her to join him on the road and they played a show in Allen's hometown. "She absolutely tore it apart. It was unbelievable," he recalls. Married 13 years, Allen says he knew he'd found his match "after I saw and heard her perform." The couple last year wrapped up a long run of their act -- Blackwell sings and plays the straight woman to Allen's antics -- at the Westward Ho casino. "We have a lot of fun, we enjoy it and that's what's made our act so successful," he says. "We have a great rapport ... and we get along well. We look forward to working together every night. I'm very proud of her because I think she's a tremendous talent." And she doesn't ask for much. "All she wants for Valentine's Day," Allen quips, "is a little card: American Express." Blackie's magic As a teenager, Lauri Perry would sneak in through the back of the Sahara hotel-casino to catch performances in the lounge of her idol, Blackie Hunt and his musical group, The Characters. "He was one of my idols because he was just a wonderful musician," says Perry, better known these days as Clark County Commissioner Lorraine Hunt. "He did all of this bizarre, crazy kind of comedy. It was all clean and very funny." In the mid-'60s, Blackie Hunt teamed up with Frank Ross (formerly of the Mary Kaye Trio) to form a comedy team. "They needed a female vocalist and I auditioned" and got the job, the commissioner recalls. Their working relationship evolved, and she and Hunt married in 1968 (the second marriage for both). The following year, the couple found themselves performing across the street from one other -- she fronted her group, The Lauri Perry IV at the Landmark hotel-casino, while he and the reunited Characters played the International hotel-casino, where they later worked together, "performing kind of like a poor man's Sonny and Cher act," she says. "I loved working with him. I loved singing with him." In the '70s, with three children between them, the couple decided to begin developing the property at East Tropicana Road and Eastern Avenue, which Mrs. Hunt had purchased years before. They teamed up with her family (who were longtime area restaurateurs) to construct a shopping center that houses The Bootlegger, an Italian restaurant that has become a Las Vegas dining institution. "Blackie and I thought it was going to be a wonderful place where we would hang out at night with all of our musical friends and have a little jazz trio and eat pizza and drink beer and have a good time," she says. The couple took what was to be a three-month hiatus from show business "to kind of get organized," but never returned. In the meantime, she became increasingly involved in local governmental affairs and was elected to the County Commission in 1994. "I always saw us as a team. If he was doing well, then I was supporting him; if I was doing well, he was supporting me and that's how it's been all along," she says. "I think the basis of that really is the commonality of our music and our sense of humor and our core values." Music still plays a large part in their lives, and Mr. Hunt, who has grappled with a series of illnesses over the years, continues to pen tunes. After long days working on the commission, she says, "some nights, a good way to get my frustrations out is to sing. A glass of wine, Blackie playing the piano and a few songs and all the tensions of the day are gone." Mr. and Mrs. Las Vegas Hers was not just another face in the crowd. So when "Mr. Las Vegas," Wayne Newton, spotted Kathleen, a Cleveland attorney, in the audience at one of his shows here in 1990, he wasn't about to let her get away. "I went offstage," he recalls, "and I said to one of my aides, 'There is the most gorgeous creature out there I have ever seen in my life. Go out and find her ... and make sure she does not escape, or don't come back.' " (Little did Newton know that he met Kathleen's parents years before, through a mutual friend, Las Vegas Chief Municipal Court Judge Seymour Brown.) Initially, she declined the offer to visit Newton backstage after the show. "When she did come backstage, my first reaction was that she was even more beautiful than she had appeared in the audience," he says. Upon learning her profession, "I thought, 'I've finally found one I can kiss -- an attorney that is." The couple spent a year developing their friendship before they began dating. They married in 1994. How did Mrs. Newton know "The Midnight Idol" was the one for her? Easy: For years, her personal relationships had taken a backseat to her family and career. "I knew when I was ready, willing and able to give up my career and my home and being with my family and move to Las Vegas, there wasn't a hesitation that I was absolutely in love for the first time in my life," she says. "To me, it was like what you thought of in fairy tales, that you could meet someone who could really be your best friend and your lover and your husband and be able to spend all of your time with him and get along great. I lucked out." The two spend "practically 24 hours a day" together. She accompanies him on tour (they'll spend their fourth anniversary this spring in Australia). When they're not on the road, they stick close to their sprawling Las Vegas ranch. But the music rarely stops. Newton says: "My wife loves singing and if I sung every moment of my life to her, you couldn't find a happier camper." Prescription for love Too bad for Dr. Lonnie Hammargren that he is a brain surgeon and not a cardiac specialist. "I saw her and my heart stopped," Hammargren, who is also Nevada's lieutenant governor, recalls of the first time he laid eyes on his wife Sandy, in 1976. Good thing she was a nurse. The Niagra Falls, N.Y. native worked in the intensive care unit at Sunrise Hospital, where Dr. Hammargren is a practicing surgeon. Eventually, she left her position there to work briefly at his office. "Then I kind of caught on that he was interested in more than me working for him and I quit and went back to the hospital," she explains. "I just never saw myself (dating) a doctor." But she couldn't stave off his advances for long, thus beginning a 12-year-long courtship that ended in marriage in 1989. The couple shares their home with Dr. Hammargren's massive collection of unusual knickknacks, which include a piano and fur coat once owned by Liberace, among a virtual treasure trove of other items. "It's just amazing what he can come up with just using bits and pieces of junk and what he can build with it," Mrs. Hammargren says of her husband. "You'd have to be around here to know that it does make sense." Her only fault, Dr. Hammargren says: "She likes to clean house." archive Share on printShare on emailShare on facebookShare on twitterShare on google_plusone_shareMore Sharing Services 0