Bill placed an ad in the Dallas Voice personals 19 years ago, seeking companionship, and Jim answered it; the rest is history
MATCHMAKER, MATCHMAKER | Jim Lovell, left, and Bill Stoner pictured a year after they met via Dallas Voice personals in 1995; below, a photo from their wedding in Iowa. (Courtesy Jim Lovell)
When Bill Stoner placed a personal ad in the Dallas Voice in 1995, he wasn’t looking for love. Instead, he sought companionship, someone to go to the symphony with.
Having lost his partner fours years earlier, he decided it was time to be more social and start enjoying life again.
“My first partner was very out there, very charming and outgoing and enjoying life, and I just thought it’s time that I get back to doing that myself,” Stoner said. “And I thought ta-da! The Voice!”
Not into the bar scene because of the cigarette smoke, Stoner said he turned to the Voice that summer, placing a personal ad seeking friendship. For about 10 years in the late ’80s and ’90s, personal ads ran in the paper. People took out the ads, detailing what kind of relationship they were looking for, and if someone wanted to respond, he’d call the number dedicated to the personal ads, key in a mailbox number for the ad and leave a message.
Jim Lovell responded to Stoner’s ad because it mentioned interests like concerts and the arts and wasn’t explicit about being romantic or physical. Lovell, too, was interested only in friendship after losing his partner earlier that year. He kept himself busy during the school year as a teacher, but when summer came, he was lonely.
“I’d lost a lot of friends, so I discovered I had a lot of time by myself,” he said. “I certainly wasn’t ready for a relationship. I wanted to build friends.”
Lovell was one of a few responses Stoner received to the ad, but the only one he responded to. He said it excited him that they both had music in common, with Lovell being a music teacher and Stoner being a musician. And they’d both lost partners, which helped Lovell, who was still mourning his.
“Since I was just fresh from losing my partner just a few months ago and Bill had lost his four years ahead of me, he was able to help me deal with it and the issues with that,” Lovell said. “I think at that time I was going through the anger stages. It was a good find.”
They soon discovered that Stoner, then 51, and Lovell, then 38, had each lost their partners when they were the other’s age. It seemed like more than coincidence to them.
“It was just beyond coincidence we always thought,” Stoner said. “We think somebody else had a hand in this besides us two and the Voice.”
Lovell started traveling during summer break, which delayed their meeting. But the two spent countless hours on the phone getting to know each other, a rarity since they both hate chatting on the phone.
“For hours on end, which neither of us had ever done before nor after,” Stoner explained.
Stoner started falling for Lovell during those phone conversations, but he knew he wasn’t ready to move on in a romantic way, so he waited. When they arranged to meet for dinner at Stoner’s place, he watched him from the window, thinking he was almost too good-looking.
“I knew where we was coming from, as cautious, cautious,” Stoner said. “But I was thinking, damn, damn, damn, this guy sounds amazing.”
For Lovell, his heart became attached in the fall when he invited Stoner on a vacation to Hawaii for his fall break. What followed was a whirlwind romance.
“It was just the most marvelous romance that I don’t think either of us had before,” Stoner recalled. “We thought we served a purpose with our first partners and now we’re each other’s rewards.”
The couple settled down in Plano and raised four cats. In 2010, they married in Iowa to get their legal affairs in order before retiring and moving to the small town of Tourves in southern France two and a half year ago.
Although removed from the many Paris protests for marriage equality in France before its legalization last year, the couple said they were thrilled the country recognized their marriage.
Much to their surprise, Tourves is a conservative town and the “hotbed for the far right,” a fact they discovered after relocating. For a while, the townspeople would whistle as they walked by, which Stoner explained is a way to taunt gays since they believe they have lisps and can’t whistle. But he’d often whistle back, and the taunting ceased.
Now the town is used to them, and they’ve made friends.
“We’re here to stay,” Stoner said.
And after 19 years together, the fact that a simple personal ad brought them together still amazes them.
“I wasn’t really looking for anybody in the first place. I was just wanting to go concerts with people,” Lovell said. “I never would have thought after answering that ad we’d be together after all this time.”
This article appeared in the Dallas Voice print edition May 16, 2014.
