When Roger Nyhus called Rod Hearne to ask him out on their first date, he was rebuffed. “I told him I was making a pie,” Hearne explains somewhat apologetically. Nyhus, not one to have his amorous instincts thwarted by pastry, persisted. Couldn’t the pie wait? “I was new to the dating game,” Hearne says. The…

David Robison and Donald Kane met in 2002 on a dating website. Kane is a programmer at Amazon.com, and Robison is a partner in a software company that creates computer-based training materials for surgeons. He also sits on the board of Rainbow Families of Puget Sound, a social organization comprising about 400 families with LGBT…

Columbia City’s Valerie Curtis-Newton and Kim Powell had a good laugh when they showed up for their first date in 1997 dressed identically in what they call “Yankee comfort clothing”—loafers with no socks, khakis, an oversized white oxford shirt over a black tank top. They soon figured out that they had grown up a mere…

“We’re not suited to each other at all,” Mark Mitchell announces by way of introducing himself and his partner of 10 years, Kurt Reighley. “I am loud and vulgar, and Kurt is nice and sweet.” But this brashness has played out very well for him over the course of their relationship. The two met in…

The last thing Joseph Skillings remembers before his head hit the pavement was that he had stepped in to protect a woman who was being attacked by a man at a bus stop. It was January 2008, and Skillings was on his way home from planning a production of A Midsummer Night’s Dream for his…

If the trajectory of a romance can be charted through the books a couple reads, perhaps it is a good sign that Ruth Frobe and Nicki McCraw met while reading David Sheff’s harrowing memoir about his meth-addicted son, Beautiful Boy, and have since moved on to Tina Fey’s lighthearted Bossypants. The two met early in…

Jody Hall and Kelly Ring met in the usual way: riding around in a car topped with an enormous cupcake at the 2005 Pride Parade. Hall, owner and cupcake doyenne of Cupcake Royale, had pulled out all the stops to make sure her float was one of the sweetest in the parade. Hall and Ring…

Often we talk about the restaurant industry, and it’s understood that we mean the line cooks and chefs, servers, restaurant owners, farmers, purveyors, bussers, dishwashers and so on. Less so, peripherally, the media that covers them. But we forget, or we ignore, or we overlook the fact that the industry lives and dies by the…

One of the most important seasons is upon us: tailgating. I believe football has also started. I’ve never turned down a beer served from the bed of a pickup truck, but I think it’s not a bad idea to serve a beverage that’ll set your pre-stadium experience above the rest. With that in mind, here…

I’ll be raising a glass or three of the smashing Semillon to toast one of my very favorite winery’s anniversary. The winery in the schoolhouse in Lowden—just down the road from another gem, Woodward Canyon—was the realization of the dream of Walla Walla banker and longtime fermented grape fan, Baker Ferguson and his wife, Jean….