The original version of this post ran eight years tomorrow. While I was going through some old technical files, I found a picture that reminded me of how Mrs. Hoge and I met and our time working together in the music business in Nashville.
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I met the young lady who became Mrs. Hoge in the Grand Ballroom of the Waldorf-Astoria just before 6 pm on the Saturday of Halloween weekend, 1977.
The Audio Engineering Society was having its Fall convention at the Waldorf, and the main exhibit area was in the Grand Ballroom. I had presented a paper on loudspeaker driver parameter measurement that afternoon and was spending the rest of Saturday checking out the exhibits. It was almost closing time when I got to the booth for Harrison Systems.
Henry Martin, an old friend from Boy Scouts and high school, worked for Harrison. He was giving a demo of a Harrison recording console to a very attractive young lady who seemed intent on learning as much as she could. I waved at Henry, and he waved me over. It was almost closing time, and Henry wanted to get to supper with his wife. He introduced me to the girl, noting that she was just finishing her degree in Audio Production at Indiana University, that my job was currently based in Elkhart, Indiana, and that I had worked as a recording engineer in the music business in Nashville.
The exhibits were closing, so I invited her to dinner. She said no. She had plans that evening with the friend she was staying with. So I asked her to lunch, and she said yes to that.
Lunch the next day was at Oscar’s in the Waldorf. Since she’d never had one, I ordered her a Waldorf salad. I asked if she had plans for the awards banquet that evening. She said that she had a ticket. Who was she going with? No one. I was stunned. There were five or six thousand men at that AES convention and maybe a half-a-dozen women who weren’t booth babes, and this beautiful woman didn’t have a date. How about going with me? OK.
We kept in touch afterwards, did some long distance dating, and wound up both moving to Nashville at the same time a year later. (Back to Nashville in my case.) And about a year after that we were married.
RULE 5 UPDATE—
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2021 UPDATE—In late 1978, Connie and I coauthored a paper on concert hall acoustics and recording techniques. It was accepted for presentation at the May, 1979, Audio Engineering Society convention in Los Angeles. She presented the paper at the convention.