A Match Made in Madison, Ongoing in Silver Spring

Terry Theise and Odessa Piper could be Washington's most high-powered yet low-key food couple. Well respected in their fields, they live modestly and with an obvious great affection for each other.

They met in 1993, when the wine importer from Silver Spring made a sales call at her Madison, Wis., restaurant, L'Etoile. Theise found her food a good match for his German wines, and very quickly their own chemistry became apparent as well.

Both were married to other people at the time. The pair corresponded quite properly by letters and cards, setting up a restaurant wine dinner in 1994. After that, Theise says, he knew it was the real deal, and steps were taken to end their first marriages.

Theise wanted to remain near his son, so they decided Piper would come here. She told him it would take about a year for her to extract herself from ownership of L'Etoile, but it wasn't until 2005 that she sold the restaurant to former employees Tory and Traci Miller, who pledged to work with the same community of farmers Piper developed. That same year, the University of Wisconsin gave her an honorary doctorate in humane letters, which, as someone who never finished high school, she found deeply gratifying.

Theise and Piper were married in 1996. They travel together on Theise's wine-buying trips to Europe.

Perhaps the intervening years of their commuter relationship is one of the reasons they seem happiest when ensconced in their Silver Spring apartment. "When we first came together, I was so indiscriminately in awe of this guy," she says. "I was just this small-town chef. When it came time to cook for him, everything I made was a disaster. Even my vinaigrettes didn't work."

Theise says that is true.

"We were telling this to our vintner friends in Europe, and they recalled an apt saying: 'When the food is salty, the bride is still in love.' "

He's an unabashedly doting spouse. In his acceptance speech at last month's James Beard Foundation awards, when he was named the nation's outstanding wine professional, he proclaimed to all: "As I was walking up here, I was thinking of all the people who believed in me. . . . The best of all is my wife, Odessa Piper. She believes in me. And she's a fox." The crowd loved it.

The couple are not in total agreement about how food and wine go together, however, which was evident in a recent airing of views on the effects the alium family can have on the enjoyment of Riesling. It was back-and-forthing with some tenderly added "dears" thrown in.

"I'm more discriminately in awe of him now," she says.

Theise says that, too, is true.

-- Bonnie S. Benwick