Love Story: New Year's snowstorm kindled their romance

Elizabeth (Kopcienski) Schwartz of Mount Sinai talks about meeting her husband, Joseph.

"S.V.R." That’s how my husband, who imagines himself to be quite clever, explains our blessed life. It’s shorthand for "Yes, we are," a phrase used many times over our years together. If said fast, it sounds like S.V.R. I was almost 17 and living with my family in Mount Sinai. Joseph lived in Port Jefferson and was a year ahead of me at Earl L. Vandermeulen High School, also in Port Jefferson.

The skies were heavy and gray the morning of Dec. 31, 1970. I was helping my family get ready for our annual New Year’s Eve party. The weather forecast started calling for heavy snow. No problem, our party would go on. Not so for Joseph’s party. He had plans to host a party in his parents’ finished basement with a girl he was seeing but who canceled because of the snow. A list of possible dates was dwindling as the snow was accumulating. He called name after name, until he got to me. I wasn’t even one of the top five, but my parents were the only ones who said yes.

The heavy snowfall that night gave way to a crystal-clear, moonlit New Year’s Eve. Instead of hanging out in the basement, Joseph and I put sleds in his parents’ Volkswagen Fastback and headed to St. George’s Golf Course in Setauket. Sledding down the hill on the crisp snow with Joseph remains a clear memory for me.

Not so clear to either of us is where our first kiss happened that night. He thinks it was behind a bush in my parents’ driveway. I remember us joining my parents’ party at midnight and exchanging a quick brush of the lips behind the couch. Nevertheless, this unlikely date turned into days, weeks, months and then years. It lasted through college and when Joseph joined the Air Force as a pilot while I attended graduate school for music therapy at New York University in Manhattan.

The Air Force sent Joseph to an base outside of Phoenix for flight lessons. He was settling in when fate stepped in again. I was unexpectedly offered an opportunity to start a music program at the Phoenix School for the Deaf. For the second time, I said yes and moved across country for the job — and for Joseph. A year later, Joseph was reassigned to McGuire Air Force Base in New Jersey. I thought we were managing well as a long-distance couple, but apparently Joseph was lonely. Several months after he moved, he sent me a beautiful card with a flowery "Happy Anniversary" sentiment. Inside was a simple question, "How about it?" Of course, I said yes, and we were married a year later, on July 5, 1981, in a wonderful ceremony in the apple orchard in my parent’s backyard.

Fifty years later, Joseph and I live in a beautiful Mount Sinai home built on family property. He retired in 2018 after almost 40 years of flying, most recently as a Boeing 767 captain with American Airlines. I continue to teach music therapy remotely for Molloy College. Until the COVID-19 pandemic, Joseph and I took advantage of our flight benefits to travel the world.

Our three children, happy and successful, are scattered across the country. In what might be a family legacy, two of our three children married childhood friends from Mount Sinai.

As we add to our years together, Joseph and I look forward to spending more time on our sailboat and visiting our grandson, Max, and our three granddogs.

— With Ann Donahue-Smukler