Linda Riebel and Brad Wade

We Met on the Steps of the War Memorial Opera House

“We owe our happy marriage to opera. After communicating by email and telephone for several months (we had met as opera lovers through the Science Connection, a matchmaking service – alas, no longer extant – whose motto was ‘Better than carbon dating’), we decided to meet in person. Brad had two season subscriptions in San Francisco, and he invited me to join him in the summer of 2000.

“I arrived and saw this tall, dark, and handsome fellow standing on the top step outside the box office. We exchanged pleasantries and sat down to a brilliant performance of… Don Giovanni, the opera about the king of libertines. We can boast to the end of our lives that we saw Anna Netrebko and Dmitri Hvorostovsky on our first date. I reciprocated with tickets to a touring performance of The Royal Shakespeare Company, performing… The Taming of the Shrew. We insist that the choice of titles has nothing to do with our personalities.

“The photograph you see here shows us dressed up for an opera event and we think there should be ‘dress up nights’ at one performance every season! As decades-long subscribers, with dozens of treasured performances in our memories and many friends old and new joining us at the opera house, we found it only natural to join the Bel Canto Society by including San Francisco Opera in our estate plans.”