Too Good To Be True?

By Aja Simpson, produced by Out There Podcast

Re-released on December 16, 2021

Welcome to Out There Podcast. Our stories are written for the ear, so for those able, we recommend listening while reading along. Transcripts may contain minor errors; please check the audio before quoting.

WILLOW BELDEN: When I moved to Wyoming, there were two things that sealed the deal for me. One was that there were beautiful mountains nearby. And the other was that Wyoming gets a LOT of winter. Oh, and I had a good job offer. So I guess that’s three reasons. 

But anyway, about the winter. I love winter. I love snow. I love skiing. I love those mornings where every twig is coated in white.

If you are also a lover of winter, you might be interested in an app called PeakVisor.

PeakVisor is one of our sponsors for this episode. And when you use their app in winter mode, you can get ski resort schedules and lift statuses in real time. The app will show you opening times and current availability of every major ski resort in the U.S.

There are a lot of other things you can do with PeakVisor as well — and I will tell you about some of those later in the episode. But for now, take a look at PeakVisor in the app store. You just might love it. 

(Out There theme music begins)

Hi, I’m Willow Belden, and you’re listening to Out There, the podcast that explores big questions through intimate stories outdoors.

To start off, I want to share some exciting news: this February, we are launching a new season of Out There. 

We’re not changing the focus or the format of the podcast. We’ll still be telling the kind of introspective outdoor stories you know and love. We’re just grouping those stories around a common theme.

The theme in this case is “Things I Thought I Knew.” All season, we’ll be sharing stories about outdoor experiences that changed something we thought we knew about the world. Some of the storytellers discover new truths about themselves. Sometimes they find new truths about humanity. Sometimes they figure out a new way to do good in the world.

The season kicks off in early February, and in between now and then, we’re going to be taking a little break. But don’t worry — there will still be things to listen to. For example, in January, we’re bringing you a special guest episode from another podcast that I think you’ll love. Plus, of course, we’ll be giving you a sneak peak at the upcoming season.

If you’re not already subscribed to our email newsletter, go ahead and sign up so you don’t miss out on any of the fun. There’s a link for that in the show notes.

(theme music fades out)

And now, on to our story for today.

This is a love story. A love story that, on its surface, seems a little far-fetched. It involves chance encounters, unlikely coincidences...and a happy ending.

We often assume that stories like that are just fairy tales. The real world is muddier, and less poetic — right? I want you to set aside those assumptions for a moment, because sometimes the real world gives us little glimmers of hope. This episode is about one of those glimmers. 

It’s a story that first ran last year. But I want to share it with you again, because it won a national award from the Public Media Journalists Association. Besides, I think we can all use a little hope in our lives right now.

The story is about a woman named Donna Martino, and her husband, Walt House, and it explores when it’s worth throwing aside skepticism and taking a chance on someone.

Aja Simpson has the story.

AJA SIMPSON: The story you’re about to hear is of my cousin and his wife. The first time I heard it was in 2017, when they invited me and my boyfriend to stay with them in Colorado. I had never spent much time with them, but when we arrived we immediately fell in love with their banter and chemistry. We could tell these two people were meant for one another. And then they told us this story.

(cheerful music begins)

In 1998, Donna was living and working in her hometown of Chicago. She had just moved back there from Minneapolis after her first marriage ended. She wanted to spend some time by herself to reconnect with who she was and what it was that she enjoyed most in life. She was an outdoorsy person and it was important to her that she got to know those interests again. 

DONNA MARTINO: I had discovered a love for rock climbing and started doing that for a couple of years. And then through that group of friends, I met some other friends who introduced me to whitewater kayaking. So I started doing that a lot.

AJA: One day, a few years later in 2001, Donna got a letter in the mail from her mother.

DONNA: My mother sent me an article that she had seen in the Chicago Tribune about surf kayaking on Lake Michigan. It was a very cool, four color picture article. And I actually knew one of the guys in there, and there were two other guys I didn't know. One of them was in this really cool closeup of him kayaking with his paddle and he was surfing through the waves and I'm like, ‘This is really cool.’ So I hung the picture up on my refrigerator, and that was it for a while.

AJA: Donna thought nothing of it. The picture was cool, she hung it up, and that was that. Little did she know that this attractive kayaker from the newspaper would soon show up in her life in a different capacity. 

(music slowly fades out)

So a couple months go by and Donna had decided she’d spent enough time on her own and wanted to dip her toes back into the dating pool. She had done some online dating since her divorce…

DONNA: And I met a couple nice guys, went on a couple dates, but nothing really clicked. 

AJA: But now?

DONNA: I'm like, ‘You know what? I want to get back on match.com and just see if there's any new faces out there.’ And I updated my profile a little bit and I did a really narrow search. I chose someone who lived very close to me, because I didn't have a car at the time. Between 30 and 40, cause I didn't want someone too far off of my age. Non-Smoker, social drinker, you know, very, very similar to me.

So I put all that in there and then I did search. And there were nine men that came up. I read all their bios and this one guy sounded really interesting. We had a lot of similar interests, lot of things in common, we were both divorced. We both liked graphic design. We had just moved back to Chicago after our divorces. 

And I just thought he sounded really nice. So I clicked on more pictures — he had other pictures to look at — and it turned out to be the picture in the Chicago Tribune of the guy kayaking with the surf all around him. And it freaked me out because I'm like, ‘This is not a coincidence.’ I'm not superstitious. So I was like, ‘What? What's happening here?’ So I was like, ‘Oh my God. Oh my God, do I write to him? What do I do?’

AJA: It’s kind of an unlikely scenario, right? You have a photo of this gorgeous man on your fridge...and suddenly you match with him on a dating site? That doesn’t happen in the real world. 

Donna mulled over her options. She could write to him, and mention the picture. But what if that creeped him out? Maybe she should just move on. Forget about him. Message a different guy. But at the same time, what if this was more than just a coincidence?

WALT HOUSE: So segue two or three months later, and I'm on match and I get a message saying, "Don't be alarmed, but I have your picture from the article on my refrigerator. My mom sent it to me.”

(relaxed music begins)

AJA: That’s the guy from the photo.

His story was remarkably similar to Donna’s. Like her, he had recently moved back to Chicago, where he’d briefly lived years ago. He’d also just gotten out of a sticky marriage prior to moving, and was taking this time alone to focus on himself and invest in the hobbies he loved, like surf kayaking, white water kayaking and other outdoor activities. Luckily, upon moving, he was able to snag a job at a kayak shop. 

One day, while he was working, he got a phone call from the Chicago Tribune. They wanted to run a piece about the small community of kayakers in the city, and asked him if he and a few of his friends were interested in doing an interview and photoshoot on Lake Michigan.

WALT: So I did the interview and photo shoot. The article appeared in the Sunday paper on the front page of the lifestyle section. And it was a very nice picture. So I put it on my match.com profile. And I thought, well, we'll see what happens. I was looking for a partner or a friend who was into the outdoors, and I thought this picture would filter out those that weren’t really into that kind of stuff.

AJA: A couple months later...

DONNA: So I decided I was going to take a chance. So I wrote, "Not to freak you out or anything, but I have your picture on my refrigerator." 

So he wrote back right away and he's like, “I’m so…”

WALT & DONNA: “Flattered.”

WALT: “Are you into kayaking?” And she's like, “I'm into kayaking and climbing and snowboarding.” And it was very cool to me because I wanted someone that did those kinds of things. 

DONNA: And so we wrote back and forth through the Match.com system, but then our accounts expired cause we only had like a two-week trial period. 

AJA: Match.com’s system worked so that users had to upgrade to full memberships in order to exchange contact information. Neither of them upgraded. They were enjoying their conversations online, but they thought it all seemed too good to be true. And usually if something SEEMS too good to be true, it isn’t real. 

DONNA: And I thought, ‘You know what? The kayaking community in Chicago is…’

WALT: Very small. So I figured ‘If I run into her…’

WALT & DONNA: ‘I run into her/him.’

WALT: So...and if it didn't work out, you know, it wasn't going to be the end of the world. And then it's just like kayaking. It’s like, there's another, another eddy somewhere down the stream that I can catch. Or if I can't surf this wave, I'll catch the next wave. 

(music fades out)

DONNA: A couple months go by, and I meet my friends at the pool. There's an organization that rents out the pool and then you can bring your kayak to practice during the off season. So I met my friends there and as I'm walking in, I look around and I see Walt standing in the middle of the Olympic-size pool with little kids, in kayaks, paddling around him. And I'm like, ‘Oh my God, there he is. I'm going to actually meet this guy.’ 

WALT: So, I’m teaching this class and I’m treading water, and I notice out of the corner of my eye a woman walk in with a kayak on her shoulder. Now I had seen Donna's picture on her match.com profile, and I recognized her. And then I had some, a little fluttering of my heart. I was very excited to see her, but I was in the middle of the pool teaching. So I couldn't just get out of the water and introduce myself.

DONNA: So I play it cool because I didn't want to interrupt him. So I was paddling around with my friends and at the end of the night, I took my boat out of the water and I see him come towards me. 

WALT: But as soon as the clinic was over and she was available, I walked up and introduced myself, and shook her by the hand and said, “It's great to finally meet you.”

DONNA: And I started getting really nervous. And he smiled, and I smiled. And he puts his hand out and he's like, "Hey, I know you." 

WALT: She had a big smile on her face. And it was a happy little incident that she showed up that night. 

DONNA: I'll never forget it. It was like this moment in time where I only saw him. And I knew we were going to be good friends. I could tell right away.

WALT: That was our first meeting.

AJA: You’ve probably gathered by now that the man from the kayaking photo was Walt, so you know how this story ends. You know that he and Donna eventually end up getting married.

But how does that happen? How do the two of them go from this unlikely fairy tale situation...to marriage? Many of us would probably assume that a relationship that starts so improbably could never work out in the long run. That only happens in movies, right?

All these doubts were swirling through Walt and Donna’s heads at this point too. But despite the odds, they both decided to go for it.

DONNA: I knew I was taking a chance, because this was someone who I didn't know. I knew in my heart that it was the right thing to do because all of the signs were there. 

WALT: And when I met Donna, I was like, ‘Yes, I'm going to take it slow and easy, but I like this woman. She's got a lot of the things I'm looking for: intellectual and emotional,’ and it was a really good connection from the get go.

(keyed up music begins)

AJA: As they slowly began to get to know each other, their relationship blossomed. Their first unofficial date was at REI (because of course it was). And they began formally dating in 2003, a few months after meeting. They saw each other almost every weekend and while they learned more about one another, they continued to get to know themselves. Later on in the year, they began preparing for a trip to Devil’s Lake in Minnesota over Memorial Day weekend to spend some time together outdoors.

This trip was going to be a test of their relationship. While they both loved outdoor activities, they had very different strengths. Walt was a seasoned kayaker, but wasn’t very confident as a rock climber. Donna was a natural on the rock, but she was less experienced when it came to whitewater.  

Their plan for this Memorial Day trip was that Walt would take the lead when kayaking and Donna would teach Walt a bit more about climbing.

They were looking forward to it, but it was also a risk. If you’ve ever tried to teach a new love interest how to do something, you know that it doesn’t always go over well. Once again, they were taking a chance that seemed unlikely to lead to success.

(music ends)

WILLOW: Hey, it’s Willow. We’ll hear what happened to Walt and Donna on that trip in just a moment. But first… 

It’s that time of the year when I kind of wish I could hibernate. Or at least, spend a lot of time curled up in sweatpants with a cup of hot cocoa and a good book.

But of course, I still have work to do, and meetings to attend. And for a lot of those things, I have to look at least halfway presentable. Which is why I was so excited to get some new clothing from a company called tentree.

Tentree is one of our sponsors. They make eco-friendly clothing, and for every item you buy, they plant 10 trees.

The thing I love about their clothing — aside from the sustainability aspect — is that it’s comfy and stylish at the same time. It’s the kind of clothing that feels like you’re wearing PJs, but is appropriate for me to wear to work. 

For 15% off your first order, go to tentree.com and enter the promo code OUTTHERE at checkout. That’s T-E-N-tree-dot-com, promo code OUTTHERE.

And now, let’s get back to the story about Walt and Donna. When we left off, they were just about to embark on a trip to Minnesota, where they were going to go rock climbing, and kayaking.

WALT: I hadn't really seen Donna on the river yet, only in pool sessions, but she had a solid Eskimo roll. So I didn't feel too ill at ease, and it was only class two. So rivers are rated from their level of expertise you need from one to five-plus or six. But a, a class two is, you know, highly survivable. The risk of injury is very minimal. 

DONNA: I had done like class two, class three, so this shouldn't have been a problem. But I just could not catch my breath, I was having a little anxiety. He's like, “You know, you don't have to do this.” I'm like, “No, no, I'm fine. I can do this.”

AJA: When they found their spot on the river, they decided one person was going to watch from an overview above while the other kayaked down below. Walt went down first, and went through gracefully, making it look easy. And when he finished, he gave Donna the heads up that he’d be on his way back up, and that she should get ready for her turn in the water.

(soft music begins)

DONNA: So I pushed off, got into the water, and I knew the spot was right, you know, to the right. So I stayed on the right of the river and I went through it perfectly. But then I started feeling myself fall to the right, so I braced myself, but I didn't have my paddle positioned correctly — and so I just flipped over to the right. And I was already out of breath because I was nervous, and so I just pulled my skirt, got out of the boat, hung onto my boat, but I lost my paddle. 

WALT: And the next thing I know, I see her floating by, and then I see her paddle float by. 

DONNA: So I'm like trying to swim to the right of the shore, and I hear this voice, “Are you okay?”

WALT: And so I jump into my boat, paddle out, get her, shuttle her to the shore of the river, then chase down her paddle.

DONNA: Somehow he found my paddle in that huge river. And I’m like, “Oh my god, thank you so much. You’re amazing.” I just had so much respect and appreciation for him. That he got down there so quickly, he found my paddle...and there was no judgement — at least I don’t think there was.

(Donna laughs and the music fades out)

AJA: Donna remembers that as the day she fell in love with Walt. She fell in love with his courage and selflessness. But perhaps even more importantly, she allowed herself to be vulnerable around him. And that gave Walt the chance to see her as she was: someone who could take risks, but laugh them off if things didn’t go according to plan. 

DONNA: So the next day we were gonna climb, and this was my sport. So I thought, ‘Well, this is my chance to redeem myself after that failed attempt at kayaking.’

WALT: I have a fear of heights, and I always try to use climbing as a way to manage my fear, but I hadn't climbed in a while. So the longer I take time off from climbing, the fear creeps up and gets magnified. 

DONNA: The rock there is different than what I was used to, cause I'd been used to climbing at Devil's Lake, which is quartzite. And quartzite is very slippery. It's a beautiful pink rock, but it's super hard and super slippery. And this rock at Taylor's Falls was I think it's granite or basalt...I'm not sure. It's like dark gray and very, very sticky. 

WALT: So luckily enough these weren't very technical climbs and weren't very difficult to do, but, you know, I didn't want to have a little bit of a panic attack in front of Donna. 

DONNA: I could tell he was a little nervous trusting his feet, and I knew where he was coming from because I was there, you know, a few years prior. So I just encouraged him to trust his feet and move up the rock slowly. And he did great cause he's a, he's a natural athlete, so he picked it up pretty easily. 

AJA: When you do something your partner is really good at, you tend to want to excel at it. You want to impress them, show them you can keep up. That didn’t happen on this trip. Neither Walt nor Donna achieved superhuman feats while they were trying out the other person’s sport. But as it turned out, it was actually better that way. 

WALT: You know, again, I had a little pre-climb jitters, but everything was good. It was a really good first trip for us, that showed both of our weaknesses. And we could talk about it.

DONNA: But you would've, I would've never known that he had a fear of heights. He put himself out there and he tried, and he did really well.

(lighthearted music begins)

AJA: Walt and Donna have been together for 18 years now, and their 15th wedding anniversary just passed in July.

WALT: I popped the question while we were at a kayak pool session, and she was paddling up to me and I was just kind of off looking into space and just had a...I had a big grin. And she’s like, “What are you thinking about?” And I’m like, “I’m thinking about our wedding.”

DONNA: And I remember him in his rash guard, and he was holding his paddle, and he just looked really, really cute. And we were both thinking the same thing at the same time. Like, it’d be nice to get married at…

DONNA & WALT: Devil’s Lake.

WALT: And there’s this carved out, by the Conservation Corp., amphitheater. And I thought, this would be a great place to have our wedding. 

(music fades out)

We had the ceremony outside in the gazebo. And the dinner and all of the toasting was outside. It was very beautiful.

DONNA: And, uh, one of the cool moments was after the ceremony, we were waiting for the dinner to be served and out in the distance was a pair of deer. A male and a female deer.  

WALT: And we had a yogini perform the ceremony for us.

DONNA: She said, “That’s a really good sign.”

WALT: She's like, “That is a really good omen.”

DONNA: And, uh, that just, kinda made us feel like, yeah, this is great. This is…

DONNA & WALT: Perfect.

WALT: I mean, up until the day of the wedding, we had these horrendous temperatures of in the nineties with humidity and all that. And then it rained that morning, and everything cooled down and it was perfect.

(gentle music begins)

AJA: I don’t blame you if you’re rolling your eyes right now. It’s such a sappy story.

But what’s so compelling about it — at least to me (and I think to Walt and Donna, too) — is that this fairy tale didn’t happen by accident. Sure, there were unlikely coincidences, but unlikely coincidences on their own don’t lead to happy endings. You only get happy endings if you put in the work and take advantage of opportunities that present themselves. 

The reason why Walt and Donna fell into such a remarkable circumstance was because they both took a leap of faith. They put themselves out there and took a chance on what could be. 

DONNA: One of the things I learned after my divorce was that I needed to learn to trust my instincts. And had I trusted my instincts, I wouldn't have married that first guy. 

(Donna chuckles)

You know, all the signs were there that I shouldn't, I shouldn't do that. And so after I got the divorce, I realized you should have trusted your instincts. You should have listened to yourself. And you don't know how to trust yourself until you put yourself out there and you take chances. And the more chances you take and things go well, you build that confidence. And the more I did that, the more I learned to trust my instincts.

WALT: I learned from most of my outdoor activities, that the moment, when it presents itself, you have to take it, but you also have to be prepared for it. You have to work on yourself. 

So all the kayaking I did was, you know, years of training and working up to different skill levels to be able to put myself into those risky or chancey situations. And it's the same thing when I met Donna. I went through the divorce and knew that I was partly to blame for it failing. I mean, a relationship is two people. So I worked on myself. 

DONNA: The way he sounded on paper and all of these things that were kind of aligning for me to meet him...if this really was, I hate to sound sappy, but if this was meant to be, if he was my soulmate, then I owed it to myself to take this chance. This guy sounds amazing, and I deserve this, you know, and I was glad I did it. 

(music fades out)

It turned out to be the best thing I did in my life.

AJA: After I heard Walt and Donna’s story for the first time, I was inspired. Inspired personally because my boyfriend and I also met online, so I was excited to know that it was possible to foster a relationship like that. And inspired in a broader sense because they exemplified the philosophy that diving into something head first is always the first step toward manifesting the things you most want in life. 

You never know what’s around the bend.

(upbeat music begins)

WILLOW: That story was reported, written, and produced by Aja Simpson. Aja is one of our former interns. She’s currently working at Audible and Cosmic Standard, creating shows for TED and Google. 

I’d like to take a moment to say thank you. Thank you for listening to Out There. Thank you for sending us kind words now and again. Thank you for sharing episodes with your friends. Thank you for believing in us.

I want to give a special shout-out to all of you who are supporting us financially, including Tessa Peters, Matthew Simonson, Thomas Lee, Sora Kim, Doug Frick, Phil Timm, Tara Joslin, and Deb and Vince Garcia. This podcast wouldn’t be possible without you.

(music fades out)

Thank you also to everyone who has been sharing Out There with your friends, including Mary Gordon, Cathay Rotman, Tessa Peters, Laurie Richardson, and Michael Mowry. If you’d like to spread some cheer and earn rewards for sharing Out There, just go to outtherepodcast.com/share.You’ll be able to get your own personal referral link, which you can share with your friends. 

And the person with the most referrals by December 31 will have a chance to be interviewed by the Out There team, and we’ll make a custom story for you! Again, that’s outtherepodcast.com/share.

Also, I wanted to remind you that you can get a FREE Out There sticker, and be entered into a drawing for a chance to win an REI gift card, if you take our listener survey. We’re doing this survey so we can get to know you a little better, because knowing who you are helps us produce stories that make a difference in your life. The survey closes TOMORROW, December 17th, and I have a link to it in the episode description. Thank you so much for your time!

Support for Out There comes from PeakVisor. PeakVisor is an app that helps you make the most of your adventures in the mountains. 

One of the things they offer is 3D maps to help you plan out your trip. And recently, they updated these maps, so they’re now ultra-high resolution. That means you can see tons of detail — down to individual trees. It’s almost like going for a helicopter ride over the area you want to explore.

Once you’re out on an adventure, you can use the app to figure out what you’re looking at. For example, maybe you’re on a hike and you see a mountain in the distance, and you want to know what it is. PeakVisor will tell you.

If you’d like your own personal mountain guide, check out PeakVisor in the app store. You just might love it.

(Out There theme music begins)

And as I mentioned at the top of the show, we’re going to be taking a little break as we gear up for the start of our new season. This is the last episode of 2021, but we’ll be back in January with some special bonus content. And in February, we’ll be launching a brand new season. I’m so excited about the stories we have in the works, and I can’t wait to share them with you.

That’s it for this episode. Our advertising manager is Jessica Taylor. Our audience growth director is Sheeba Joseph. Cara Schaefer is our print content coordinator. Our ambassadors are Tiffany Duong, Ashley White, and Stacia Bennet. And our theme music was written by Jared Arnold. Be safe out there, and Happy New Year!

(theme music ends on a last whistling note)