Dealers live happily ever after
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Rick: I've been a Honda dealer 45 years. It's how I met my wife -- she was a Honda dealer. We met at the NADA convention in 1977 and were married in 1980.
Rita: My father was a Honda dealer in Santa Rosa, California. I was raised in the Honda business and met Rick after college at a Honda 20 group meeting.
Rick: I petitioned to start a Honda 20 group. In June 1977 there was enough interest, and NADA brought the first dealers together.
Rita: I met Rick at the first meeting but got to know him at the second meeting in Hawaii at a nice resort in October 1977.
I was very much intrigued by Rick's marketing ideas. He had a handbook for his associates, which was a pretty novel idea in 1977. I asked him if he could send it to me so I could create one for my store.
Rick said he had never been on a motorcycle ride on the West Coast. I said, "Why don't you come out and we'll ride up the coastline of California?" We had a chaperone -- another Honda motorcycle dealer from Florida. We were definitely not alone -- that would not have gone over too well with my family. We rode all the way to Canada and back down. That was our first date.
We had a beautiful white wedding February 16, 1980, at St. Sebastian's Catholic Church in Akron, Ohio. But you couldn't see to drive. Our photographer ran off the road and got stuck in a snowbank. My family couldn't wait to get out of town. They were freezing.
