By Erin Moy
It was a May evening in Los Angeles more than 40 years ago when Diana Duke Grothe â68 first met Adam Ogilvie â67 at a Harvard studentâs house. She was a 17-year-old Westlake student and he was a 19-year-old Harvard exchange student from England. It was the old story: boy meets girl, boy and girl fall in love, boy has to move back to England in two weeks.
They had a whirlwind romance, cramming all the requisites of a high school romance into the short amount of time allotted. They attended Harvardâs Grad Night and Westlakeâs Prom together and made a point of cancelling all of their other plans with friends to appreciate their last moments together.
Time of course, took its toll on the young couple. Ogilvie returned to England and though they promised to write to each other cross-Atlantic, the high school relationship faded into a long distance friendship. They both established families of their own; Diana Duke got married and became Diana Grothe, Ogilvie got married and had children. In 2008 both their lives shifted as Grotheâs husband died and Ogilvie got divorced.
It was not until last year when Ogilvie visited Los Angeles over Christmas that they saw each other again.
“We had a wonderful time together and then he had to go back to England again,” Grothe said.
It seemed like it was the spring of 1968 all over again until Grothe returned the visit, traveling to England to visit Ogilvie and his family. The visits between Ogilvie and Grothe continued regularly until Grotheâs visit to England this September when Ogilvie proposed on her 60th birthday.
Ogilvie and Duke Grothe are going to be married at St. Saviourâs Chapel on Sunday, Feb 14 with their family and Harvard and Westlake class mates in the audience.
“I feel like this has been one of the happiest years of my life,” said Grothe, “having my love come back to me after all these years.”
