Love, stirred: A relationship that started in a Seattle kitchen ends in a Walla Walla Valley 'forever home'

Chefs know that a dish, cooked slowly, will have time to develop layers of nuance and complex flavors.

With the ticking by hours and just the right heat, something new is born out of the ordinary.

It can happen in love that way, too — just check the temperature between Robin Leventhal and Andy Devine after almost three decades of simmering.

The wife and husband shared their history on a recent evening as the setting sun pinked the expansive vista surrounding their home on Mojonnier Road.

Their forever home, Leventhal and Devine said, joy in the thought lighting their faces.

It started in Seattle in 1993, at Georgina’s Italian Kitchen on Capitol Hill. Leventhal, now an instructor at Wine Country Culinary Institute at Walla Walla Community College, was fresh from the University of Michigan with a masters of fine arts and two years of catering work.

Getting hired as the evening sauce chef was her first step into restaurant work.

Devine filled the same position at Georgina’s on the day shift, when he would dice 40 pounds of tomatoes for Leventhal’s use on the dinner menu.

That he was there at all was happenstance, Devine said.

He grew up in the Kentucky tobacco fields and left home to hitchhike around the country. Landing in Seattle with a friend, Devine took on fishing jobs for awhile.

But afterwhile he was done with that, done with moving, ready to be settled for a spell.

“Seattle was a beautiful place, and I stayed there,” he said.

The era was right — Seattle was not yet encumbered by massive corporate spaces or painful political unrest. The energy was that of a day on the cusp of dawning, life coming into focus.

Music, art and theater were well represented, and the city’s charm was showcased in movies like “Sleepless in Seattle.”

Leventhal, too, felt at home there. She’d been raised in Idaho by parents who built for a living, and she was ready to build a career as a chef. Seattle, where food was king, was a perfect starting point.

Devine and Leventhal agreed, with matching grins, there was a little steam between them at Georgina’s. But they were in their mid-20s, and life was ahead of them.

It was when a repairman came to fix the restaurant’s espresso machine and walked out with a check for $800 that Devine saw a more defined future for himself.

“I figured out I was on the wrong side of the line,” he said.

As that work took Devine elsewhere, Leventhal immersed herself into cooking. Soon she was a sous chef at another restaurant, creating dinner specials five nights a week and having a great time for the next four years.

“It felt like I’d landed in the right spot,” she recalled.

Leventhal and Devine remained friends. He rented a room in her home for a bit. He convinced her to move to the East Coast and then back to Seattle. They developed a mutual group of friends, the kind of people who appreciated food and culture.

In 2003, Leventhal rented a theater space and opened “Crave,” a bistro where home-style food served in generous portions attracted attention in an area ripe for the changes that would soon explode in the neighborhood.

“All of a sudden, it was the hottest address to have on Capitol Hill,” Leventhal said.

Six years later, she finished fifth in Season 6 of the unscripted cooking show, Top Chef. That was the same year building code issues forced the close of Crave, she said.

Leventhal answered the call of new adventure when a job opened up at the WWCC culinary program in 2013. In 2019, Devine decided to visit Walla Walla from Federal Way, and that June, the two longtime friends attended a two-day Grateful Dead concert at the Gorge Amphitheater by the Columbia River.

“We were standing there on the second night,” Leventhal began, when Devine interjected — “Someone got cold at the show and needed to be warmed up.”

He tells of wrapping her in a blanket and impulsively kissing her on the neck.

“Are we feeling this?” Leventhal recalls saying.

“Are we really doing this?”

Yes, Devine answered. “It looks that way.”

He returned home, but not for long.

“I asked if I could come back to Walla Walla. Six weeks later, I bought a house about six blocks away from hers.”

There had been no talk of marriage between them, but Devine nonetheless found himself buying a ring while on a job in Montana the weekend before Thanksgiving 2019.

While he was still there, the flight from Seattle to Walla Walla was canceled due to winter weather, he said.

And by the time the evening flight to Pasco was also canceled after he’d landed in Seattle, Devine had beat the crowd to the car rental counters.

“I drove that night through the freezing fog from Seattle to Walla Walla.”

Leventhal, meantime, had gone to Devine’s house to prepare for his homecoming.

As the two made breakfast the next morning in their bathrobes, Devine presented the ring. He asked his friend if she would now become his wife.

She said she would. In the kitchen, of course.

“What better place,” Leventhal asked, delighted joy in her eyes still.

In July, with the tiny entourage allowed under pandemic restrictions, she and Devine married in the Walla Walla County Courthouse. Plans call for a real party on their first anniversary.

The couple agree Walla Walla will continue to be their home.

“I can’t imagine living anywhere else,” Leventhal said.

“What else do we need in life?”