Jim Stingl
News of love story has spread across the globe
Adopted son sets out to find birth parents, who reconnect, marry.
Life is starting to return to normal for Michele Newman, Dave Lindgren and Martin Schmidt, and by that I mean the requests for television appearances, radio interviews and other media attention have slowed.
You may have caught their story, which first appeared in The New York Times on Labor Day weekend and since then has gone nuts on mainstream and social media.
Here’s how it goes: In the early 1980s, Michele and Dave were dating in high school in Loyal, Wisconsin. Michele got pregnant at age 15, right about the time she and Dave were breaking up, and the baby was given up for adoption.
That baby, now 36-year-old Martin Schmidt, decided in 2014 to contact his birth parents, and they both approved the request. What none of the three anticipated is that Michele and Dave would rekindle the spark they had as teens and fall in love with each other after decades of having no contact.
They were married Aug. 4 in Marshfield where they’re living now, and Martin performed the service. He not only had found and reconnected with his birth parents but inadvertently put them back together in their 50s. Not a bad little love story. “We’ve laughed for a couple of years that we have a Hallmark movie going on here,” Michele told yet another reporter who reached out to her; in this case, me.
The Hallmark Channel also wants a piece of this, along with “Good Morning, America” which flew the three to New York after the Times piece ran, “CBS This Morning”, “Inside Edition”, the Lifetime channel, People magazine, the BBC and a German TV crew that plans to head this way.
“The story we get from all the people reaching out is that it’s good news in a time when a lot of people don’t feel like there’s much good news. I think it strikes a chord more or less across the board, whether you are a mom or dad, or a son or daughter, or someone who’s falling in love. There’s something in the story that people can relate with,” Martin told me.
He lives in Gunnison, Colorado, and works for the county as a road foreman. He and his wife, Carin, have a son, Malcolm, 3, and daughter, Willow, 1.
Born in Marshfield in January 1982, Martin was adopted by a couple living in La Crosse, William and Cynthia Schmidt. They were loving and nurturing, and when Martin turned 18 they provided him with paperwork to find his birth parents if he wanted.
But he waited until the time right, which turned out to be when his wife was pregnant with their first child in 2014. He contacted the Wisconsin Department of Children and Families, which tracked down Dave, in Marshfield, and Michele, who was living in Hawaii.
Martin contacted Michele and they talked on the phone, their first contact since Michele held the infant briefly in the hospital. Michele then sent a text to Dave, after getting his number from her brother who had remained friends with him. She wanted to thank him for approving the contact with Martin.
She had no idea if Dave was married or had a family, and didn’t want to intrude in his life. She sent the text on a Friday night, knowing it would be late in Wisconsin and assuming that would be the end of it.
“Instead, he happened to be awake, and he texted me back almost immediately,” she said.
Soon they were having long phone conversations. In February 2015, Dave visited Michele in Hawaii. The attraction between them grew strong. Martin had not set out to have this “Parent Trap” effect on his birth parents, and in the early going they didn’t tell him how much things were heating up.
Then they flew together to Colorado to visit their son. “When we slept together, I think he kind of got it,” Michele said with a laugh.
Martin is happy for Dave and Michele, who have each been divorced twice. Michele did not have any more children; Dave has three other birth children and four stepchildren whom he remains close to, plus a bunch of
grandchildren.
“It was perfect timing for everybody,” Martin said. “They’re very sweet together, and it seems like they balance each other out very well.”
Michele decided to come back to Wisconsin in 2015, and she moved in with Dave. He is a master cheesemaker and a dairy plant manager. She now works as a victim witness coordinator in the Wood County court system.
Dave proposed in December 2015, but there was no rush to the altar. The wedding came finally last month in a ceremony at sunset amid a casual gathering of family and friends, about a mile outside of Marshfield. Martin presided at the service by the power bestowed on him through the Church of the LatterDay Dude, inspired by “The Big Lebowski.”
The New York Times showed up for the wedding, invited by Michele’s sister Teri.
If all this turns into a movie, Dave said he would be fine with Mark Wahlberg playing him.
“It’s like a miracle almost,” he said. “The timing was just amazing. If Martin would have looked us up at 18 or 20 when he first could have, it never would have turned out like this.”
Contact Jim Stingl at (414) 224-2017 or jstingl@jrn.com, or at Facebook.com/Journalist.Jim.Stingl