For those on here who might not know me, I’m Larry’s daughter, Mollie. I’m the one who helped set up this blog (yes that is my fault, I accept all responsibility). Because I set this page up, I still have some access to this blog and will wield this power today as I see fit *insert evil laugh here.*

Today, I’m here to inform everyone that it’s my parents’ 30th wedding anniversary. 

If my dad were writing this post, he’d probably say there are monuments being built in honor of my mother for putting up with him for 30 years. And I will add, he’s not totally wrong. For Valentine’s Day 2022, he somehow unknowingly went to a store, picked out a card to give to his wife, paid for it and signed right below the sentence inside that read, “You’re everything I always wanted in a man.”

There’s no limit to stories I could probably tell to try and embarrass my father, but he has a blog to tell those stories himself. So instead, I’ll tell you a story straight out of a Nora Ephron movie.

Both my parents were born in Los Angeles in 1962. They grew up in Los Angeles and both went to college in California. So naturally, they met in a bar in Greece.

As far as I understand it, I owe a fair amount of my existence to my dad’s hatred of Italy and my mother’s love of Bruce Springsteen. Some of these details may be embellished or incorrect, so forgive me. I wasn’t alive for most of this.

About 37 years ago, Larry was traveling around Europe. This was the summer before he moved to New York City to get his master’s degree from Columbia. At no point in his multi-country travel itinerary was he supposed to end up in Greece. By some strange luck, he hated his time in Milan so much that he decided it was easier to just go to another country. He picked Greece.

About 37 years ago, Liz was in Greece traveling with a couple of friends. She’d nearly ended up going to Rio de Janeiro but ended up in the Mediterranean instead. She and friends decided to go to the island Ios, generally known for its nightlife. While walking around, she heard Bruce Springsteen playing in a bar and decided this was the place to go.

And that’s where Liz and Larry, two people born and raised in Los Angeles and about to live on two different coasts, met for the first time. Today, they have the business card my dad used to write down his parents’ home phone number framed.

There’s so much more to this story that maybe my dad will share one day — their years dating long distance between LA and NYC, how he left Manhattan and the progress on his doctorate to be with her (talk about grand romantic gesture), the disastrous dinner when Liz introduced her white boyfriend with an earring to the whole Salas-Rodriguez family, being together for seven years before marrying to further both of their careers, his future wife laughing in his face when he proposed. 

And of course the wedding, which my dad has written about a few times. Liz wore her mother’s dress. Larry wore a top hat and tails. The theme was 1940s, and the music combined the rat pack with mariachis. Their first dance was to “The Way You Look Tonight.” When their limo failed to show after the reception, she waited in the rain in her dress while hotel guests mistook her new husband for a bellhop which, as my father described it, looked like a scene out of a Norman Rockwell painting.

Most of the time, a rom-com might end there. You get a “happily ever after, the end.” And yet somehow, Liz and Larry have proved that a happy ending can be a “to be continued.”

I was a very lucky kid to grow up with my parents. For someone who reads a lot of books, watches a lot of movies, I’m not sure anything has really made me believe in true love more than watching them.

They were always an active team in my life growing up. My mom ran the tightest volunteer front-of-house for all my performances. My dad performed in more Nutcracker ballets than I did. They sat through hours of high school musical theater banquets and once helped wrangle a group of exhausted, partially hungover theater kids through international travel from Scotland to LAX, a task that probably deserved a medal of some kind.

They were always there for landmark moments in life, even on the opposite side of the country. My mom helped me move into my first college dorm room in Boston. My dad yelled at U-Haul customer service on my behalf during my hellish move to Connecticut after I got my first big journalism job. No doubt you can find the photos from my own Columbia graduation on my mom’s Facebook account, where she consistently posts the photos where she looks great and my father and I look like two people who have never seen a camera before in their lives.

I am, without a doubt, Liz and Larry’s daughter. I got my mom’s eyes and my dad’s squint-smile. I text her when I find a beautiful designer bag in the thrift shop for a steal and him when I find out the release date of a shark movie that promises to be as funny as it is terrible. While nowhere near the scale of their combined collection, I have about 70 records on display and shouldn’t be left alone unsupervised in Amoeba Music. I’m slowly trying to catch up to their concert count and called them over FaceTime from a Bruce Springsteen concert in New Jersey.

Through it all, Liz and Larry did it together. Bought a house they turned into a home, had careers, raised a human and stayed in love through the whole thing.

Now, 30 years later, both Liz and Larry are retired. The human person they raised is now a (mostly functional) adult who has a job and pays taxes and rent on the East Coast. As I post this, they’re celebrating their anniversary in Paso Robles, probably with some great bottles of wine. I hope they’re having a wonderful trip.

Cheers to 30 years and many more. May we all be so lucky to find a love like Liz and Larry.