When I was 30 years old, my agent told me I needed to go to Los Angeles to get some “West Coast credits.” I didn’t want to go because it meant I’d lose my precious rent-controlled apartment on Central Park West as well as the supportive New York theater community I’d worked so hard to get into. After graduating from Juilliard five years earlier, I was getting theater work in and around the city.

I didn’t think I was pretty enough to get work in Hollywood, but my agent disagreed. She had faith in me, so I reluctantly packed up my stuff and moved to Santa Monica with Gus, my German shepherd. A week after we arrived, the Northridge earthquake happened. I crouched under a table, holding Gus close. Aftershocks filled me with terror, and I wondered if California was telling me I wasn’t welcome.

Over the next few months L.A. slowly recovered, and I started going on auditions. Much to my amazement, I got hired to do a new play and got a couple of small roles on some sitcoms. In between gigs, I took Gus on long walks along the beach and found that I was starting to like California.

One afternoon, I went to a coffee shop in Santa Monica where a middle-aged red-headed guy with a beard was playing Van Morrison songs on his guitar.

After he finished, I thanked him, and we started talking. He explained that he was a neurologist at USC but loved to play guitar in his free time. I was intrigued. So when he asked me out, I said yes. He took me to dinner a few times in his snappy red Porsche, then invited me to join him for a weekend in Yosemite National Park.

As we were eating dinner in the quaint little cabin on our first night, he said he really liked me, but if our relationship was going to go anywhere, he wanted me to “get out of show business.” Did he seriously think I’d give up acting to be his girlfriend? That was a role I couldn’t and wouldn’t play. After that, I stopped taking his calls.

A few weeks later, I had to travel to Indiana for my grandfather’s funeral. On my way back to Los Angeles, I changed planes in Cincinnati, and as I sat down, a nice-looking, 30-something man with a boyish smile in the next seat gave me a welcoming nod. I nodded back, got a script from my bag and tried to read but promptly fell asleep.

Half an hour later, I woke up with a little drool seeping from the corner of my mouth. I laughed at myself, and the man with the boyish smile laughed with me.

“Sorry about the drool,” I said, wiping my face.

“It happens to the best of us,” he said with a smile.

I noticed a book in his hand. “What are you reading?”

“The Tibetan Book of Living and Dying.”

“Sounds good.” I thought, “This guy must be pretty cool if he’s reading that book.” I looked forward to sitting next to him for the next three hours.

“I’m Martha, by the way.” I offered my hand.

“Nice to meet you Martha-by-the-Way. I’m Don.” We shook hands.

“Do you live in L.A.?”

“Silver Lake, and you?” he asked.

“Santa Monica. Are you a native Californian?”

“No, I’m from Pennsylvania. That’s where I’m coming from now,” he said.

He seemed so nice and normal. I worried he might be married, so I asked, “Do you have family in Los Angeles?”

“No, just me,” he said with a smile. I hoped that meant he was single.

He gestured to the script on my lap, “Is that a script you’re reading?”

“Yeah, I have an audition for ‘Diagnosis Murder.’ Maybe I’ll get to work with Dick Van Dyke.”

“I hope you get it.” He sounded genuinely supportive, which was so different from the neurologist’s response to my work.

“Thanks. Me too. What do you do?”

He said he’d studied filmmaking at the University of Texas at Austin and had made a few films, but now he split his time between the press box at Dodger Stadium, charting pitches for Major League Baseball, and judging scripts for the Nicholl Fellowships in Screenwriting at the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences. I was impressed.

The rest of our flight felt like a first date, complete with dinner and a movie. When we landed at Los Angeles International Airport, I got nervous because I wanted him to ask for my number but worried he might consider me geographically undesirable since we lived on opposite sides of L.A.

As we headed toward baggage claim, he asked if I wanted to get together for coffee sometime. I said yes, and we exchanged numbers. Don’s smiling blue eyes and witty conversation had me feeling giddy at a time when I least expected it. The universe had taken my grandfather but had given me a new friend.

A week later he drove all the way to Santa Monica to take me to coffee. When we finished, he suggested we go to a movie, so we went to see “The Last Seduction,” a neo-noir thriller. During our discussion afterward, I learned how much Don knew about filmmaking, and from then on we started spending Saturday afternoons at the academy, watching screenings of new films for free since he worked there.

Don also introduced me to the joys of hiking in Griffith Park and the Santa Monica Mountains. Being with him felt so right. He was unlike anyone I’d ever met, childlike and grown-up at the same time, goofy and intellectual. But the most important thing was that he wasn’t asking me to change. He accepted me for who I was.

As Don and I grew closer, my desire to return to New York faded. After six months of dating, we decided to live together and rented an old Craftsman home in Echo Park, which sat at the top of a hill that overlooked Dodger stadium and Elysian Park.

A few years later, we got married and bought a house in Glassell Park, where we still live today. I came to Los Angeles to find work, but ended up finding so much more.

The author is a freelancer and storyteller who lives in Glassell Park with her husband, two dogs and four quail.
She’s on Instagram: @marthathompsonbooks.

L.A. Affairs chronicles the search for romantic love in all its glorious expressions in the L.A. area, and we want to hear your true story. We pay $400 for a published essay. Email LAAffairs@latimes.com. You can find submission guidelines here. You can find past columns here.