When Lucille Ball met Desi Arnaz, she was struggling to further her Hollywood career. Before heading to Los Angeles, she had been a model in New York City who used the stage name Diane Belmont. Arnaz had come from money but fled Cuba for Miami with his family as a teenager following a revolution in 1933 that left them destitute. He held a string of menial jobs before making it big as a musician who introduced conga line dancing to America.
The actor Maureen O’Hara, in her book “Tis Herself: An Autobiography,” recalled that when Ball first saw Arnaz at the movie studio she knew her friend was smitten. O’Hara could “almost hear the bells ringing in” the actress’ “head.” In O’Hara’s version of the meeting, Arnaz snubbed Ball, calling her the “queen of B-movies” who would be bad for his career. But in a separate version of their first meeting, Arnaz saw Ball on the set of the film and commented “whatta hunk o’ woman” (via “The Real Story of Lucille Ball”). However their first meeting actually went down, they were soon enraptured by each other. Six months after they first met, Arnaz was back in New York City performing with his band. Ball was also in town and he came to her hotel. She was in the midst of an interview in which she denied their relationship was going anywhere. Minutes later, he popped the question.
