Piece for Bethesda Magazine: Meeting Their Match

Excerpts:

Fly Away with Me

As an engineer, Joe Kraus frequently traveled between Los Angeles and Naples, Italy, where his company built a satellite component. On one of those trips he was re-routed on a different flight. Desiree Cortazzo, a young lawyer, had lost her passport and missed her original flight, too. When they ended up on the same plane, Desiree was amused by the five bottles of Chianti nestled in Joe’s briefcase. Meanwhile, Joe was enchanted by the Italian woman nestled in the seat next to his. So on the connecting flight from New York to Los Angeles, he decided to forgo his first-class seat in order to sit next to her in coach. The couple got married on July 20, 1969, the day of the first manned lunar landing. Desiree now teaches Italian cooking and Joe is the chief information officer of the Holocaust Museum. They live in Chevy Chase and have two children, ages 24 and 22.

Oopsie

You might say that Bernie Mihm Jr. and Kathy Auer met by accident. He rear-ended her car at the stop sign at the corner of Rockville Pike and Flanders Avenue in North Bethesda in 1976. Both had been playing volleyball behind Garrett Park Elementary School and had left at the same time. “I thought she was really cute, so I naturally offered to come over and fix the damage,” says Bernie, 54, co-owner of Fine Earth Landscape in Poolesville. “I still have the piece of scrap paper that she wrote her name and phone number on.” The couple was married five years after the mishap. They live in Poolesville, have two children, ages 22 and 19, and celebrated their 31st anniversary this year. Kathy, 52, is a geologist/groundwater hydrologist for S.S. Papadopulos & Associates in Bethesda.

For the full article: https://bethesdamagazine.com/2012/08/27/how-they-met/