Over nearly a decade, more than 70,000 individuals have shared over 40,000 stories with StoryCorps, the oral history project that has become a treasured national institution. And just in time for Valentine's Day, the most heartfelt, mushy tales of love ever recorded have been turned into a collection of essays for founder Dave Isay's latest book, All There Is: Love Stories from StoryCorps, released February 2nd.
Forthright and eloquent, All There Is shares the hopeful encounters and breathtaking heartache as told in more than 30 personal accounts of courtship, discovery, and loss.
"There's nobody I'd rather travel through life with than you," Sonya Baker tells her husband Michael Fazio. The pair met near exit 19 on the New York Thruway in 1993. She was an opera singer making frequent trips to auditions in Manhattan; he was a tollbooth operator she describes as "desperately cute." Their brief encounters surrounded by the sweet smell of highway exhaust were more frequent as the weeks went by—he put an orange cone outside his booth so she would know where to find her toll collecting cutie. Finally, Baker worked up the courage to ask him out. They followed a more usual courtship that included Yankee games and evenings at the Metropolitan Opera until they finally tied the knot.
Dave Isay, recipient of numerous broadcasting honors, including five Peabody Awards and a MacArthur “Genius” Fellowship, will speak on the topic of love at 7:00p.m. tonight at Barnes&Noble on the Upper West Side, and tomorrow at a WNYC event in Midtown East. These stories, writes Isay, "speak to the enduring and redemptive power of love ... In a culture that often feels consumed by all that's phony or famous, these stories give me hope." (You can donate to StoryCorps here.)
