It Can Happen to You.

There is never a time or place for true love. It happens accidentally in a heartbeat, in a single flashing throbbing moment…Unknown

Nancy Ripp White

A brillant best friend living in NYC recently wrote and released a book with a fabulously unique book publisher, the company’s focus is women over 40. The Three Tomatoes Book Publishing. It Can Happen to You—fifty serendipitous, unexpected, out of the blue, life-changing love stories.

Yes, it CAN happen to you! These fifty stores just knocked me over. All true. All entertaining. All written with LOVE. You will laugh, you will cry, you will see yourself on the pages. Most of all – you will be convinced that love is truly meant to be.

Who doesn’t enjoy a love story? You’ll meet Sophia, who fell in love with her doctor who performed her brain surgery. Susan, who fell in love with a handsome crooner – who sang to her over the bananas in Trader Joe’s. And, Mark. He dropped in on his friend, Rita, a renowned psychic who predicted he would meet and fall in love with a woman who worked in a hospital. She also gave him a timeline for the meeting. They finally met, and Mark fell in love within ten minutes.

I always say, “there would be no Kate and Arthur without Nancy.” My friend, the author, Nancy Ripp White, and I met in NYC when I flew in from California for a few days of work at the number one ‘Teen’ magazine in the country. We hailed a taxi after an extraordinary client meeting and headed back uptown. Girl talking brought us around to men – of course – and Nancy broke out in tears over a very recent break-up. I tapped the driver on the shoulder and told him to drop us at the next hotel bar – we needed cocktails. That was about forty years ago, and we have maintained a long distance friendship throughout all these years. 

When Nancy left publishing, she went back to school and became a certified life coach specializing in relationships. She has successfully counseled hundreds of women on the life-changing power of self-worth and self-love for over twenty years.

The seeds for the book were planted over the years as Nancy continued to ask, “how did you meet and fall in love?” Taking on a career in love requires much research, and Nancy loved this aspect of her counseling practice. Nancy goes on to say, “after years of coaching women of all ages; I finally realized that so much of finding a love partner had to do with the unexpected. The serendipitous, out-of-the-blue encounters that changed lives in the blink of an eye.”

The Game Plan

I was a serial relationship kind of gal at the time — seven years here, two years or more there. I was not interested in children or marriage. I was focused on work and had terrific careers and fabulous friends. Then around 40, I thought, why is no one asking me out. It wasn’t like we would go out and they never called again, no one asked me for a date!

Time for action! I decided to become my own advocate. I wrote an ad and placed it in a top LA magazine that had a singles section. This was pre-internet – 1989. I received so many responses, and what fun it was to read the letters from the men responding – yes, real/handwritten letters. Well, I finally had a date – many actually…But, alas, no one special popped up. Maybe it’s me…no, no, it could not be me! So, I persisted.

I told everyone I knew and everyone I didn’t know that I was available and looking for a terrific guy. To my surprise it worked. Over dinner with a client (that I thought would be the least responsive to my game plan,) turned out to be the most enthusiastic. My future date called the next day, and we met for coffee the following Saturday. The coffee lasted through a late afternoon lunch. As he walked me to my car, he asked for my home phone number and said, “dinner next week?”  The following week came and went and no phone call – maybe it is me! 

A few weeks later, I’m chatting, late one afternoon, with an office pal about all the holiday parties coming up. Who’s going where and with whom. She wants me to phone Mr. No Call – Absolutely Not. Before I know it – she picks up the little pink While You Were Out phone message and dials his number, asking for him and telling his secretary that it’s me! He says hello, and she shoves the receiver at me. I’m speechless. So, I asked him if he owns a tuxedo and would like to go to a black-tie Christmas party with me next week. Before I can take a breath, he says YES and proceeds to tell me how crazy his travel schedule has been and how sorry he is that he did not call.

He looked so handsome in his tuxedo and still does today – over thirty years later.

Who knew that this client, over dinner, and my office pal, would change my life forever. There is always hope and the belief that fate knows our address, and it knows that love will find us in the most serendipitous way if you trust in the universe.

 It Can Happen to You is a happy read. Between the sentences and the paragraphs you’ll be transported back to those moments that made your heart skip a beat and left you breathless…

Please leave a comment about your encounter with fate and love – when least expected!