Lonnie Anderson was grabbing a quick bite at a Portland bar in the 1990s when he wandered over to a nearby table and struck up a conversation with a friend. Sitting at the same table was Anne Bolger-Witherspoon — the woman he would later marry.
More than 30 years later, the couple still laughs when they tell the story.
“It was really painful and awkward because,” Witherspoon said, pausing.
“I don’t think she liked me,” Anderson finished, laughing.
But Anne did. And the rest, he said, was “fate.”
After they started dating, Anderson began marking Valentine’s Day with elaborate, but low cost, displays. For their first Valentine’s as a couple, he turned Witherspoon’s living room into a life-size Candy Land board, complete with a giant cardboard die.
“It was really sweet because it was a way to get to know each other,” Witherspoon said. “And we’d only been dating a short amount of time.”
Over the years, the displays grew bigger — and more public. What started as private gestures eventually drew national attention, including from NBC’s Today show in 2016.
Some of the surprises have been large-scale: a Santa Fe Symphony performance in a historic theater, her name written in the stars at a national planetarium, and a heart-shaped crop circle visible from space.
Last year, the mayor of Loving, New Mexico, presented her with a key to the village and temporarily renamed the main street in her honor.
“What’s so beautiful about love is like you get to love who you want,” Anderson said. “Like you could love that person as much as you want and as big as you want.”
This year, Anderson is bringing the gesture to northern Utah, returning to the candy theme by giving his wife an entire candy store for the day.
The display will be held on Feb. 12 at Bluebird Candy Co., a Utah institution founded in 1914, that is known for its hand-dipped chocolates made at its Logan factory.
Witherspoon will walk down a red carpet toward the store and step inside to find her name, Anne, spelled out across the space in candy.
At the center of the display will be a giant red heart made entirely of jellybeans, with her name in the middle. The display was crafted at Jump the Moon, a nonprofit art studio in Logan for people with disabilities.
Michael Bingham, the studio’s founder, who helped come up with the idea for the gesture, said members created smaller styrofoam hearts, each painted with the names of people they love, to be arranged around Anne’s heart.“The community is kind of represented too,” Bingham said. “Not only is this celebrating Lonnie’s love for Anne, but we’re also celebrating the people we love along with them."
Anderson said he’s often asked how he can afford the displays or find the time to pull them off. In reality, they usually cost no more than a nice dinner and a bouquet of flowers.
“People think that I do this all myself, and it’s not,” Anderson said. “It’s like, every time I’ve ever done it, the community, everybody, says yes.”
But while the grand displays are heartfelt, Anderson and Witherspoon said they want people to know they are not a perfect couple.
Like all couples, they argue and make up, they said, but it’s worth fighting for.
“I tell people out there, love is not simple, like it’s very complicated,” Anderson said. “And you just have to hold on, even if you’re holding on by your fingernails, just hold on, because it’s such a beautiful ride when you’re with this other person. They make you so much more than you would ever be.”
