Carol Diehl
I met Matt sometime in the late 80s when I went to visit Jude at the University of Iowa where she was teaching and they were living together—under the radar, as he was still a grad student. We drove around the cornfields in their big old convertible, blasting blues on the radio. Later, having conceived of myself as the Studs Terkel of modern-day romance, I was writing a book, interviewing couples about how they met (never published, but that’s another story) and Matt and Jude’s beginning was definitely the most original. As Matt told it, Jude was the glamorous NY artist whom all the guys had a crush on. One night she was overseeing his sculpture workshop when he had an accident, cut off his finger, and she went with him to the hospital where it was successfully sewn back on. “I guess it was painful,” Matt said, “but totally worth it to ride in the ambulance with this beautiful woman rubbing my chest.”