All You Need Is . . . Love

The amours of Bogart and Bacall, Grace Kelly and Prince Rainier, Yoko Ono and John Lennon all pale in the mind of Dini von Mueffling compared to the blazing moment when she walked into a Greenwich Village cafe for breakfast and spotted a man sitting with one of her friends.

“I knew the second I saw him that I would marry him,” the New York writer says. “On our very first date I told him I wanted to have his children.” (They married and she did.)

Nevertheless, Von Mueffling compiled a little Valentine’s Day book immodestly titled the “50 Most Romantic Things That Ever Happened,” new this month from Doubleday.

It’s a rehash of oft-told romances of the rich and famous, along with a few more contemporary tales. Even after researching all that, Von Mueffling says, the most romantic story she can think of is the one she has lived.

That’s the thing about romance: It’s always best when it’s happening to you--no matter how small and simple in scale.

The most poignant story in her book, for example, is of two Manhattan singles whose eyes met across the aisle of a crowded shuttle plane to Washington, D.C. The attraction was instant, but they didn’t talk and went their separate ways. Thinking of the man while at her meeting, she realized he’d carried no luggage, which meant he’d head back to New York the same day.

So she feigned illness, left the meeting, returned to the airport and sat there all afternoon and evening, waiting for him to show up. He never did.

She boarded the last shuttle back to New York feeling dejected and a bit foolish, promising never think of this phantom lover again. But as she entered the New York terminal, she looked up and saw the man walking toward her.

“What took you so long?” he asked. “I’ve been waiting all day.”

Happy Valentine.

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The world is full of such Hallmark moments. Just ask around, as we did, and they’ll come tumbling out. Victoria, long ago divorced and now a 60ish marketing executive in Los Angeles, went skiing two years ago in Colorado, where she stayed at the home of friends. Snowed in one day, she watched the couple edit a documentary film they’d made about U.S. soldiers who fought on skis in World War II.

“I like that guy; he’s very sensitive,” she said of a handsome. seventysomething veteran interviewed on film.

“He’s unattached and perfect for you. Write to him,” her friends urged.

“Ridiculous,” Victoria said. “What would I write?”

Weeks later, back in L.A., she sent him a cute postcard saying she was a fan. He wrote back that she was his first. They met, fell madly in love, now talk to each other every night and spend one week of every month together. (He lives in another state.)

How it will end? The specifics don’t matter, she says.

“I would never have believed this kind of grand passion could ignite at this stage of our lives.”

Allana Baroni, 29, a special events coordinator in Santa Monica, says she received “a magnificent cocktail ring” for her birthday from her boyfriend of two years.

“It was great, and it looked nothing like an engagement ring. I walked around smiling whenever I looked at it on my finger.” But she didn’t look closely enough. And her boyfriend, an airline pilot, said nothing more. It was many months before she noticed there was an inscription inside the ring. It read, “Marry Me.”

“I was so upset I hadn’t seen it before. And even more upset that I had to say no. I was 23, not ready to take that step.”

He never asked her again. Their relationship continued six more years. Last October, Baroni felt ready to marry him and knew she’d have to do the asking. “That’s when I realized how agonizing it must be for a man to propose. I was so nervous, didn’t know what to say, planned a whole weekend at a hotel in Montecito and never managed to mention marriage.” Finally, at a picnic on the beach in Carmel, she popped the question. He said yes. They’ve been married four months.

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Of course, the L.A. gossip circuit pulses with glitzier tales of rich and famous couples, and how they got together.

The actor Billy Baldwin, for example, reportedly rented a suite at the posh Carlyle hotel in Manhattan. He filled it with 40 exquisite white wedding dresses designed by Vera Wang--all artfully draped on the chairs, sofas and bed amid masses of white roses. No one knows exactly what Baldwin’s girlfriend, Chynna Phillips, said when she found the unusual form of proposal. But it’s clear her answer was yes. She wore one of the gowns at their wedding not long thereafter.

And romance often blooms at the lush Hotel Bel-Air in Los Angeles, where Frank Bowling is vice president and general manager. The most romantic tale he can think of, he says, is that of the businessman and his reluctant female friend.

“They had been going together for seven years,” Bowling recalls. “He kept proposing marriage, and she kept saying ‘Let’s not rush into anything, darling.’ Eventually, he stopped asking, and she got worried.

“One night she told him about a black-tie charity event scheduled two weeks hence at the Bel-Air. ‘Can we go?’ she asked. ‘Of course,’ he said. As they pulled up to the hotel on the appointed night, she turned and asked him: ‘Do you still love me?’

“ ‘I do,’ he replied. ‘That’s good. Because 150 of our friends are waiting inside to attend our wedding tonight.’ ”

Jack Caputo, a Sherman Oaks camera ace known for his photojournalist’s approach to weddings and other romantic events, recalls a favorite.

“This guy took his girlfriend horseback riding to a bluff overlooking the ocean. There, at a selected spot, he’d had a landscaper create a huge carpet of rose petals surrounded by rose bushes. It was just an exquisite island of flowers, in the middle of which was this little, almost invisible box. The girl had no idea what they’d stumbled onto. She was overwhelmed by the beauty of it all and didn’t even see the box. He had to say ‘Look over there; what is that?’ ”

Of course she found the ring, after which he proposed, after which they presumably cantered off into the sunset to live happily ever after. We hope.

“That’s the thing about love and romance--no one can predict where it will take you,” says Seattle-based author Robert Fulghum, whose new book “True Love” (HarperCollins) is composed of true stories people have told him. One thing is certain, he says: “Love will fill your heart, break your heart and then heal the heart that’s broken.”