Looks of Love: Royal Oak Couples Share How Cupid Changed Their Lives

You never know where love will bloom.

Sometimes it wends its way between the pages of a dull textbook, sprouting amid a classroom of high school students. Or it buds on the banks of an inland lake, ducking within canoes and splashing on teenage camp counselors.

Love can also spring up in a collegiate athletic arena, zipping down a field among spinning soccer balls. Or it can divinely saunter into a house of worship, looking to unite young hearts who share similar religious values.

Love. It’s the most unexpected of visitors that’s also the most welcome. It enters into the ordinariness of everyday life, but it brings with it extraordinary magic.

To celebrate Valentine’s Day, one of the calendar’s most love-filled dates, these Royal Oak couples share their tales of when cupid shot his arrow into their lives and how and why the winged cherub is still in their midst. 

Textbook case

Molly Wicks met Aaron Smith in their economics class at Heritage High School in their hometown of Saginaw. That was in 1998. Fast-forward 13 years, and Mr. and Mrs. Smith are living happily ever after in Royal Oak with their two children, Brady, almost 3, and Brenna, 8 months old. 

When they met, Molly was a junior, and Aaron was a senior. “We happened to partner up for an in-class project,” Molly recalled. She doesn’t remember how the starry-eyed Aaron, who now is a 30-year-old commodity manager at Chrysler, got her phone number (slipped into his textbook, perhaps?), but after two weeks of him calling her every night, they started going out. 

Married now for seven years, the couple says one of their strongest life philosophies is the importance of maintaining a close connection with family and friends.

“We thrive on a busy calendar, full of dinners and play dates with friends (kid-friendly 90 percent of the time) and weekend travels to see family,” said the 29-year-old mother. They also share a passion for Michigan State University, where they attended college. 

As for V-Day, it’s all about dinner — and especially dessert — for the Smith family.

“We’ll probably enjoy our favorite pasta dinner as a family,” Molly said. “For dessert, I always like to bake a big brownie or chocolate chip cookie in the heart-shaped pan I used for our first Valentine's Day together in 1998. It'll be special this year because our son will be helping me decorate it.”  

It all adds up to love

Literally next door to the Smiths live Brian and JoAnne Zawislak. The two had known each other for a while before dating, as both played soccer — she on the women’s team and he on the men’s team — at Eastern Michigan University.

“One summer, we worked together at a soccer camp, and it’s still up for debate how we began dating at that time,” Brian said.  “She asked me to go to a wedding, but at the time, we were just friends.”

After the wedding, Brian asked JoAnne out. “She still claims she asked me out first,” Brian added with a laugh, “but I insist I asked her first.” 

The couple, who have one daughter (Brynn, almost 2 years old) share a love not only for soccer, but also for numbers. Brian, 32, is a math instructor at Troy High School, and JoAnne, 29, teaches math at Jeannette Junior High School in Sterling Heights. In addition, Brian coaches boys and girls soccer teams at Troy High.

Both also enjoy family immensely. “We spend as much time with Brynn as we can,” Brian said. “And our extended families are important to us, too. We feel blessed to have parents, siblings, JoAnne's grandma, aunts, uncles and cousins who are all supportive of us.”

The couple share a love of travel, as well. “We especially love mass transit,” Brian said. “I know it sounds weird, but we have seen San Francisco, Chicago, Boston, New York, Washington, D.C., and Baltimore without renting a car.”  

Brian’s greatest love, though, has to be his wife.

“I remember what my dad (who has since passed away) said at our wedding: 'May you live as long as you want, and never want as long as you live.' To me, it means that JoAnne and I can be together forever and never need anything because we have each other.”  

Divine intervention

Bob Wayner will tell you that his wife, Tenchi, was a godsend when they met more than 30 years ago. The Royal Oak couple first set eyes on each other at St. Anne church in Detroit. Bob’s friend, a priest, and Tenchi’s friend, a nun, got the two involved in working with a youth group at the parish. 

“Tenchi would stare at me across the room at meetings,” Bob recalled. “I finally asked her out, and the rest is history.” Of course, Tenchi says Bob did more of the staring and was infatuated with her. Let’s just say there must have been sparks flying around both of them.

After dating for three years, Bob and Tenchi married at the place where they met — St. Anne church. To this day, they remain active in the parish, and their daughter, Lauren, will be married there in June. "It’s a special place for us,” said Bob, 58, a special-education consultant.

The two, who have two grown children, aren’t big on honoring Valentine’s Day exactly on Feb. 14, but rather prefer to celebrate their affection for each other throughout the year.

“There is a priest up north that inspires us when we go to Mass up there,” Bob said. “He always asks me if I told my wife that she looks beautiful today. I felt guilty about always lying to him, so I made a point to remember to tell her that. It is a simple thing that means a lot. Tenchi now also tells me that I look good. We try to do special things like that every day.”

Tenchi, a 52-year-old former salon owner, considers Bob’s manners one of his best attributes.

“She likes that I always open the car door for her … still after 31 years of marriage," Bob said. "It’s a simple thing, but she feels it’s an act of love and kindness.”     

The church plays an important role in their marriage. They also share hobbies together, such as softball, fishing, hiking, bird watching and mushrooming. “And we give each other room to do things we are individually interested in (Tenchi plays on a soccer team and enjoys crafts, while Bob delves into music).

They also agree that marriage isn’t always a field of flowers. “It can be a lot of hard work,” they said, “but the effort is well worth it.”

Was he trolling or patrolling?

You could say Marjie Sikora made a big splash in the life of Zdzislaw Sikora when the two 18-year-olds met some 40 years ago as camp counselors in Illinois. They worked at different camps, he on one side of the lake and she on the other.

One day, Zdzislaw, who was not only a counselor but also a lake safety patroller, was cruising the waters in a patrol boat when he spotted two canoes full of campers without life jackets. He zipped over to the camp to let the counselors know about safety precautions. As he was talking, along came counselor Marjie, “with long straight hair and a gold lamé bathing suit,” Zdzislaw recalled. Bam. That was it. Not to mention that the two had a lot in common when it came to working at camps, water sports, swimming and more.

“She knew of me because I ran the only patrol boat on the lake,” he added. “She and the others had a joke about me because at camp, you made up monsters, etc., and I was the so-called ‘seaweed monster who lived in the swamps.’” 

From that point on, the two became friends. “She couldn’t visit me at camp, though, because mine was an all-boys camp. No girls allowed.”

When Marjie went away to school in Texas, the pair wrote letters to each other and eventually planned a first date in Chicago (a movie and spaghetti dinner), during their spring break. They dated from then on, and at the age of 23, got they married and eventually had two children. 

The Sikoras moved to Michigan when Zdzislaw landed a job at the College for Creative Studies (CCS) in Detroit. Today, they live in a 1924 Tudor-style home that also houses three print presses (Zdzislaw is now a professor at CCS as well as the section chair of printmaking in the school’s Fine Arts Department.) 

Having been married for 36 years, the 50-something couple say a long marriage is all about supporting each other and becoming best friends. Their favorite pastimes include enriching weekend rituals.

“We go to the Royal Oak Farmers Market pretty much every Saturday and to Border’s every Sunday morning together and then head to Papa Joe’s for a special treat,” Marjie said. They also enjoy gardening and cooking side by side.

The long straight hair and gold lamé bathing suit might be gone, but their love is here to stay.