John and Leslie met in 1987, when Leslie took one of John's screenwriting seminars. He admired her engagement ring during a class break, so she invited him over for dinner with her newlywed husband. He doesn't remember this, but she does, because he didn't bring a date. Since he encouraged students to keep in touch, Leslie sent John an announcement a few years later about the screening for a film she wrote using his story structure method. He called and they spoke on the phone for a few minutes while she made dinner for her two young children. Five books and a literary prize later, Leslie sold another screenplay and got out her notes from his class to begin. Since nearly everything she'd written using his technique had sold, she decided she owed him a cup of coffee. Leslie was newly single, dating happily and networking for business with no idea of John's marital status. By now, John was an internationally renowned story consultant with film prizes, a software business, and a new textbook. John emailed back, offering to buy the coffee. That coffee lasted so long that that Leslie got a parking ticket. Surprisingly, John had never married. He offered to pay for Leslie's parking ticket, then asked if she'd like to have dinner. She turned down help with the ticket, but accepted the dinner invitation. And John was so sincere that she was compelled to cancel all the other dates she had lined up for the next few weeks. On their first weekend trip to Santa Barbara, John, the quiet bachelor with a history of beautiful, brainy girlfriends, asked Leslie if she would ever marry again. She said no, never. She even called "wife" a four-letter word during a network TV interview about her happy divorce novel, Wife Goes On. She did not want to fall in love or discuss the M word. Leslie just wanted to have fun. Three years later, Leslie and John were still having fun. They travelled to Paris, London, Hawaii, Mexico, Key West, and New York; they wrote books and saw movies, and shared picnics on the beach. As Leslie's youngest neared high school graduation, she reconsidered her position on marriage. John admitted that he began clipping articles on how to buy engagement rings several months after they met. And so, 23 years after their first meeting, John Truby and Leslie Lehr will make their romance official on September 19, 2010 in a sunset ceremony overlooking the Pacific Ocean at the Malibu West Beach Club.
After spending the day at a tennis tournament in Palm Desert, John proposed over a romantic dinner at the Cliff house restaurant. He gave Leslie a party favor ring with a note that read "replace me with a ring to last a lifetime." Then they dug into the file of articles he had been saving and went diamond shopping together. Leslie has the most beautiful ring in the world - simple, elegant, and dazzling ...just like their romance.
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