“You want to dance?” These were the first words uttered by Ray Vogt, when he approached Mary Jane Bruno, his future wife. He was a young lad of 28 who was enamored with 24-year-old Mary Jane and her red dress. He had no idea how to dance but he told her that he danced all dances. Mary Jane claims to this day that he has two left feet. It was this dance that she was at for her dance club; the place was Trianon Ballroom in Chicago. He says that there was a line of girls who kept saying “no” until Mary Jane asked the dashing young man wearing a hat, a blue suit with a blue-gray tie, what he dances. “I dance them all the same.” That dance would carry them through out the next 54 years of their lives.
When you ask Ray where he learned to dance he would tell you that he learned in the army. He was stationed at Fort Dix, New Jersey. Girls would hold parties, and all the men in the army would go dance the night away. Even though he had this practice, he would remain a dancer with two left feet.
Mary Jane however was a dancer. She learned to dance in her early twenties from her sister Sarah. She knew every dance that was danced in that ballroom that fateful night. She guided Ray through the ballroom, even though he knew all the dances.
It was that red dress that brought them together, the dress that so clearly sticks out in Ray’s mind today, the dress that brought Ray Vogt together with his future wife, Mary Jane Bruno.
