Christopher and Dana Reeve Love Story

By Christopher Andersen. Excerpted from Somewhere in Heaven (Hyperion, 2008)

That fate could have dealt such a cruel hand to this golden couple seemed unfathomable. That they could endure it all with grace, courage and humor defied belief.

Read the story of their love-struck first meeting below.

June 30, 1987, Williamstown, Massachusetts
He simply could not take his eyes off her. Wearing a short black off-the-shoulder evening dress, her auburn hair tumbling over tanned shoulders, Dana Morosini confidently took the microphone off the stand and gazed through the blue haze of cigarette smoke out over the heads of those sitting ringside. Then, in a sweet mezzo-soprano, she eased into Jule Styne's lyrical ballad "The Music That Makes Me Dance."

Williamstown was, in many ways, home to Christopher Reeve. It was here, at the annual theater festival held on the campus of Williams College, that Chris had come every summer since 1968 to sharpen his skills as a stage actor. As he had also done every year since 1968, Chris -- cast this season in Aphra Behn's costume drama The Rover -- after a hard day's rehearsal unwound with his fellow actors at the 1896 House, a quaint white-clapboard country inn nestled in the Berkshire hills.

Each night during the summer, festival-goers packed the inn's dimly lit, ground-floor cabaret—often in hopes of seeing one of the stars perform. Over the years Chris had gamely obliged, summoning enough courage to take the stage and belt out numbers by Cole Porter, Rodgers and Hammerstein, and the Gershwins. "A lot of us have no business singing," he allowed,"but the crowd seems to get a kick out of it."

Tonight, however, Chris was content to sit back and listen to the Cabaret Corps, the tight little group of four professional singers who took up the slack each evening. Reeve's friends nudged one another as he kept staring at the slender young singer with the enormous eyes and blinding smile. Chris was oblivious to everything in the room—the clinking glasses, the hum of table conversation punctuated by clattering sounds from the kitchen, and the occasional spike of laughter -- everything but Dana.

POW! BIFF! "That was it," Chris later said. "Right then I went down hook, line, and sinker. She just knocked me out. A lot of people saw that happen." The inn's co-owner, Denise Richer, was one of them. "We kept looking at the stage, and then at him, and then back at her," Richer said, "and we thought, 'Something's happening here.' It was so obvious." According to fellow Rover cast member Charles Tuthill, who was standing against the back wall with Chris, "he was totally hit between the eyes. She took his breath away."

When her number was over, Chris shook his head in wonder. "My God," he told his buddies, "who's that? She is incredible!" As intently as Chris had been staring at Dana, she had been doing her best to ignore his presence in the audience. It had been eight years since he shot to stardom as the Man of Steel, and with three sequels under his yellow belt, Reeve and the iconic comic book hero he portrayed on screen now seemed virtually inseparable. If anything, at thirty-five Reeve now seemed more physically striking than ever. Standing a full head taller than virtually everyone else in the room and decked out in his customary preppie uniform of pale blue polo shirt, khakis, and Docksiders without socks, Chris was impossible to miss. "I just pretended Superman wasn't there," she recalled wryly. "Not as easy as it sounds."

She had her reasons. That summer Reeve;s breakup with Gae Exton, his girlfriend of ten years and the mother of his two children, was grist for the rumor mill. While shooting Superman IV in London a few months earlier, he had been romantically linked with leading lady Mariel Hemingway. Now Williamstown was abuzz with gossip that Chris was on the prowl. Afterward, Chris went backstage to congratulate the woman who had, it would turn out, won his heart with a single song. "Hi, I'm Chris Reeve," he said with all the awkward charm of Clark Kent.

"Yes," she replied, stifling the urge to blurt out, "You must be kidding." Still suspicious of his motives -- her friends had warned her he was in the audience and on the make only moments before she stepped onstage -- she politely introduced herself in return, and then listened as he heaped praise on her performance. "I've always liked that song," said Chris, who sheepishly admitted to being a fan of Broadway musicals in general and Funny Girl in particular. "It's a great song," he told her. "You know," he went on, struggling to make small talk, "Streisand loved that song, but they cut it from the movie."

"I know." She nodded, trying not to appear surprised that one of the biggest action stars of the decade not only liked show tunes but was a Barbra Streisand fan. Maybe he wasn't going to make a move on her, she thought. Maybe her friends were completely wrong about Reeve and his intentions.

They were right, as it turned out. Chris and a few of his fellow actors from the cast of The Rover were headed to The Zoo, an after-hours Animal House–style hangout tucked away in a dormitory on the Williams College campus. The name of the establishment said it all.

"Would you like a ride?" he asked. "My truck is parked right outside."

"Oh, no," Dana replied without missing a beat as several of her friends showed up to congratulate her. "That's OK. I've got my own car."

"Oh," Chris mumbled as she disappeared in the crowd. This was not the kind of response Superman was accustomed to. Dana, meantime, was being scolded by pals who had witnessed Chris's timid overtures. "You are crazy," one chided her. "Why don’t you go with him?" "But I have a car," she insisted. "I can get there on my own." "Give us your keys right now!" one demanded. "We'll drive your damn car. Christopher Reeve wants to give you a ride. Now go for it!"

"But why would I leave my perfectly good car in the parking lot," Dana persisted stubbornly, “and then be stuck at the party?" Her friends rolled their eyes, but by then it was too late; Chris had already spun out of the parking lot behind the wheel of his battered black pickup, hoping to meet up with Dana at The Zoo. When he got there, he ignored his friends and did not even bother to stop at the bar. Instead he stood where he could get a clear view of the front door, hands thrust in his pockets, waiting for the beautiful girl in the black off-the-shoulder dress to walk in.

Dana arrived a few minutes later, and scanned the crowd for Chris. Their eyes locked, and within moments they were standing together in the center of the crammed room. He had strolled up to her with a studied nonchalance that she found disarmingly clumsy. "Could I get you a drink?" he asked, and she said sure. But he never did. "We didn't get a drink, we didn't sit down, we didn't move," he later said. For the next hour, everything and everyone around them melted away as they stood talking -- just talking.

Don't rush this, Chris told himself. It's too important . . . "Well," he blurted as he looked at his watch. "It's getting late . . . It was very nice to meet you." She, in turn, shook his hand, and a half hour later both were back home in their own beds. They would eventually call June 30, 1987, simply "our day."

Go to the following page for the heart-wrenching tale of Superman's last day
.