One time, Oprah had Ossie and Ruby Dee on a Valentine's Day show about keeping romance in the relationship, or whatever sort of Oprah sort of thing you can imagine. This was quite a few years ago now, but I'll never forget it.

The rest of the couples were all about buying diamonds for her, vacation packages for him, you know the drill. Those were the "romantic" things all the other couples gave as examples of how they keep romance alive in their relationship.

Then it was Ossie & Ruby's turn. They clearly were like fish out of water, because they so weren't of that mold. But the story is so beautiful that they gave as examples. Ruby Dee said the most romantic thing she could think of that Ossie did for her was to do one of her most tedious writing "housekeeping" tasks for her--entering her bazillions of little notes on scraps of paper into her computer, in a filing system he set up just for her. Being a writer myself, I swooned.

And then, as if that weren't enough, Ossie's example was this. Their wedding anniversary is in December. Every year of their marriage, without fail no matter where in the world either of them was, what their kids schedule was, etc. they always met in their Harlem apartment at an appointed hour, and went shopping for their Xmas pointsettias they used to decorate their home for the holidays every year, brought them back to the apartment and decorated, and then cooked dinner together.

Sigh. What a guy!