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It was 1957, and Rhinelander’s Leona Forth laid eyes on Marv Schumacher for the first time.
“That’s how we met, on a blind date,” she said. “That was it.”
She knew right away. The outgoing, smiling, happy man would become her life partner.
“He was the most generous,” Leona said. “He was the best guy in the world.”
The couple took over Leona’s family business, running Forth Floral for decades.
Marv and Leona Schumacher.
On their 25th wedding anniversary, they bought themselves a treat.
“This guy was selling clocks. We looked at this one. I said, ‘I think that’s such a neat clock. Why don’t we consider, this will be our anniversary gift to each other?’ So that’s what we did,” she remembered.
“It has been an absolutely brutal year,” he said.
The period between Thanksgiving and New Year is one of his busiest times for both businesses, but especially his movie theater.
“[This time] is something that theaters look forward to every year,” he said.
This year, two movies opened on Christmas day – Wonder Woman 1984 and News of the World.
Because of those movies, Rouman’s theaters saw their biggest audiences since March, before the pandemic began.
“It still pales in comparison to even those March numbers,” he said. “But it was by far and away the most bodies that have come through our door in months.”