Much like you see in movies, his eyes zeroed in on the beautiful woman and it felt like everything around him had slowed down. He mustered up his courage and asked Lois to dinner, and was relieved when she said yes.

In a memoir he released in 2012, he talked about the courtship. He wrote, “I fell in love for the first and last time on August 1, 1956, at an Adlai Stevenson for President barbeque. That’s where I met Lois Clarke. It was love at first sight. The thunderbolt. She was as beautiful as she was sweet… It was a barbeque and I ended up in the pool with the children.”

It immediately got serious and the couple saw one another constantly for the first two weeks they dated. On August 17, 1956, just fourteen days after their first meeting, Lois and James married in a quick courthouse ceremony in Beverly Hills.

When friends and family learned about this, everyone was shocked!