In the spring of 1963, a beautiful young woman named Lily Galay was travelling through Spain.  She had left behind a strict childhood in Austria and Los Angeles, and was now spreading her wings, enjoying her youth and her freedom, and the warm atmosphere of southern Europe.  Visiting the Prado Museum in Madrid one afternoon, a man started chatting her up in broken English.

His name was Emilio.

Emilio and Lily went on a few dates, but the time soon came for Lily to return to Munich, the place she had called home for the last year.  Several months passed.  Emilio wrote her letters telling her how much he missed her.  He remembered her alabaster skin and almond shaped eyes.

In one of his letters he excitedly told her he was being sent to work as an accountant for the Spanish Pavilion in Flushing, New York, for the World’s Fair of 1964-1965.

He begged her to visit.  He missed her and told her she absolutely had to come, that she’d love New York and the Fair.  Still in the flower of youth, still suffering from a stubborn case of wanderlust, Lily Galay said yes.

And the first thing Emilio said to her when she got off the plane?

“You got fat.”

Pause.

Okay, for whatever reason, Lily didn’t slap him, kick him, or tell him to go f%$k himself.  Lily is a demure woman.  She was, and is, a lady.  She estimates she put on five or ten pounds since she had last seen Emilio in Spain.

After a frosty date or two – the relationship, mercifully, was dying – Emilio invited Lily to tour the Spanish Pavilion at the World’s Fair.

The Pavilion was wildly popular: imagine one room after the next filled with masterpieces by Picasso, Goya, Velasquez, Miro, Dali, washed down with jamon serrano, manchego cheese, and a rich glass of Rioja.

Lily waited for Emilio.  Ten minutes passed.  Then fifteen.   Twenty.  She strolled about, killing time, enjoying the paintings, and catching the eye of another man.   Another Spaniard.   He was in charge of security for the Pavilion, and his name was Javier.

It took Lily about an hour to figure out what Javier was doing there.  He wore a well tailored suit, not a uniform.  In fact, Javier spoke almost no English, and so it didn’t dawn on her until their non-conversation was nearly over that he had repeatedly been asking her for her number.  He was handsome, he was persistent.   She gave him his number.

A day passed.  Then two.

Finally her phone rang.  “My name is Ivan.  I am a colleague of Javier’s and am calling on his behalf.”

So began Javier’s courtship of Lily.

With Ivan’s help, they arranged to meet at a restaurant in Manhattan.  Lily no longer remembers the name of the place, but what she will never forget is how she and Javier sat across from each other at a small round table, smiling, each holding a pocket dictionary.

Over the course of the meal they managed to string together perhaps a dozen sentences, but if, as it has been said, 80% of communication is non-verbal, these two understood each other perfectly.

The chemistry was undeniable. He was a handsome, 34 year old well placed bureacrat in the Spanish government; she was an independent, breezy young woman of 24.

Javier’s English would gradually improve.

Lily still remembers the moment he held her face in his hands and said, “When I sleep, I dream of you, when I am awake, I think of you.”

She, too, was smitten.

Tickets to see flamenco dancer Antonio Gades at the Pavilion were impossible to come by.  The legendary gypsy dancer was a sensation.  Javier wrangled front row seats.   Lily would later live in Spain, return there many times, and see many flamenco shows.  But she has never seen a Flamenco performance like she did that August night in New York.

The way Gades stomped and cried out.  The passion.  The intensity.  The rawness.

Okay, maybe it wasn’t just the dancing on stage.

Javier and Lily began dating exclusively, but as November approached, the weather turned bitterly cold, and by this time, Lily had come to miss her family.  They said their goodbyes and she returned to Los Angeles.  Writing in his broken English, perhaps with a little help from Ivan, Javier sent her a handful of post cards over the next six months.

Like Emilio, he implored her to return.

Unlike Emilio, though, he would never call her fat, and they would date for several years.  Eventually they would marry and Lily would become pregnant. Not exactly in that order, but what’s a minor detail?

The point is, patient readers, had our friend Emilio shown up on time that evening, Javier and Lily would never have met, and their son, Alfredo,would never have been born and would never have the chance to tell you how his parents met one evening long ago at the World’s Fair.

The future would be rocky for Javier and Lily, but for now, they were lovers from opposite sides of the globe dating in one of the most cosmopolitan cities in the world, with gypsy dancers and timeless oil paintings as their backdrop.

How could they not fall in love?