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Brian Lehrer: Brian Lehrer on WNYC. Happy Valentine's Day, everyone, from our show. Yes, Valentine's Day is a celebration of love, but it's also been shaped by quiet acts of defiance. Did you know that? Do you know the history of Valentine's Day? At its core, it's about the connections that define us, whether or not the world was ready for them. For the last few minutes of the show today, we have a guest, and we're going to invite you to tell us if you've ever had to keep a relationship secret because that was part of Valentine's Day, the origin story. Did you know that?

Did you ever have to keep a relationship secret? As we explained, the origin because of family pressures, workplace rules, cultural expectations, or just whatever circumstances of your life at the time. If that sounds familiar, call in and tell us what's the love story you couldn't share at the time. 212-433-WNYC. 212-433-9692. How does it relate? Well, the holiday's namesake, Saint Valentine, is said to have secretly performed marriages in ancient Rome. Why? Defying an emperor's ban, he was eventually executed, but over time, he became the patron saint of lovers and unexpectedly, of beekeepers, epilepsy and fainting, among other things. Did you know that about Saint Valentine?

To help us untangle history from legend and explore what his story means, today we're joined by Antonio Pagliarulo, writer and the author of The Evil Eye: The History, Mystery, and Magic of the Quiet Curse and the forthcoming The Queer Saints: A Radical Guide to Magic, Miracles and Modern Intercession. Hey, Antonio, welcome back to WNYC.

Antonio Pagliarulo: Thank you, Brian. It's a pleasure to be here.

Brian Lehrer: Saint Valentine is, of course, a familiar name, but much of his story is wrapped in legend. What do we actually know about him and why this holiday has been named after him?

Antonio Pagliarulo: What do we know? We know with certainty about Saint Valentine that there actually is no certain story. We know that there are legends. Among the most popular is what you spoke about earlier, that he was either a priest or a bishop, a religious, and he defied the emperor and he ministered to Christians and he performed marriages in secret because the emperor at that time believed that single men made better soldiers, so marriage was not something that was on the agenda. Saint Valentine performed marriages and was martyred for it. He lost his life for it. That's one legend.

The other legend actually traces back the holiday to the Roman festival of Lupercalia which really celebrated more fertility than it did the idea of our current idea of romance and love. It goes back pretty far and pretty long.

Brian Lehrer: Yes, and two pretty different stories. I looked it up on the History Channel website, They have a version of that first one which says, "Under the rule of Claudius the Cruel," as he became known, "Rome was involved in many unpopular and bloody campaigns. The emperor had to maintain a strong army but was having a difficult time getting soldiers to join his military leagues. Claudius believed that Roman men were unwilling to join the army because of their strong attachment to their wives and families. To get rid of the problem, Claudius banned all marriages and engagements in Rome." Very different from JD. Vance, marriage mandatory. That's a different show.

Antonio Pagliarulo: Very different. [laughs]

Brian Lehrer: That's why Saint Valentine, as legend at least tells us, and as the History Channel seems to report his history, performed marriages in secret.

Antonio Pagliarulo: He did. He did. He was under threat. Most people often say, Happy Valentine's Day, and they forget to say Happy Saint Valentine's Day. The stories and the legends that go back to it all really do trace back to this idea of a man who was doing something in secret and yet at the same time in service for what he believed was the right cause. He wanted these couples to be married. Then, so says the legend, he did it in secret.

Another legend says that while he was in prison, one of the jailers said, "If you're really dispassionate about your cause, prove it." The jailer apparently had a blind daughter. Saint Valentine put his hands on her eyes and apparently, her sight was restored. When he went back to the cell, it said there was just a note that read, "From my Valentine." That's one other legend that it goes back to. We constantly see this story of almost just what you had mentioned earlier. It's secrecy and keeping something secret, but really the emote fueled by the emotion of love, fueled by the emotion of needing to do it.

Brian Lehrer: That's why for our little Valentine's Day call-in portion of this segment, we're inviting you listeners to tell a story of when you had to keep a love relationship secret. 212-433-WNYC. 433-9692. Call or text as Louise in Red Hook just did. Hi, Louise, you're on WNYC.

Louise: Hi, Brian. Huge fan. My partner and I are huge fans. We met at our former agency. My partner, Evan was the Creative director. I was the art director. Everyone used to joke that they thought we were dating and we weren't until we were. Then we were like, "Well, we can't let them know that they were right." Five years, five and a half years later, we run our own agency together. Not in secret that we're boyfriend and girlfriend. We listen to WNYC every day. We actually have a cartoon of you speaking into a radio in our office in Gowanus [unintelligible 00:06:31] [crosstalk]

Brian Lehrer: Wow. You had to hide your romance from your work colleagues, basically. Right?

Louise: Yes. Now, it's a funny thing where we're not out and forward about our relationship with our current agency that we run, but two months into a contract, a client will always be like, "So are you guys together?" It comes out. I think people can sense it eventually.

Brian Lehrer: Louise, thank you very much. You can hear the love in her voice. Let's get another story from Cinzia in Manhattan. Did I say your name right? Hi, you're on WNYC.

Cinzia: Hi. I am quite embarrassed, but here I am with what I believe is a beautiful story. When I was 18 years old in university, I met by pure chance a man whom I dated for a year, unbeknownst to my father, of course, who was extremely strict. This is in Italy, my country of origin. He died, actually a retired general who, by all means, would have never allowed me to date a man who was nine years older than I and whom we knew nothing about.

My mother, God bless her, she passed four months ago. My mother covered for me for a year. It was all stories that we were going to parties at people's houses because at the time my father would not allow me to date. There was no dating. You don't just show up at somebody's house and pick them up like you do in the US. He finished his training in a bank and told me basically after one year that he was leaving and that our relationship was going to end. I was absolutely in love with this man. I didn't know what to do, but I didn't press anything, and I said, "Okay, I will continue to see you until you leave." He did leave in about a month after he told me.

For a year, I wrote to him every day, but we never saw each other. He wrote back to me. At one point, I received a letter a year later saying, "I want to marry you. I want you to be the mother of my children. You have to tell your father." I was like, completely terrified at the idea of announcing to my father not only that I was getting married, but I had met this man for a year.

He gave me a phone appointment. He was living in the north of Italy, and I was living all the way in the south of Italy. He gave me a phone appointment at noon on a Sunday. He was going to call me and ask me for my father's response. Of course, I couldn't rely on my mother. I had to tell him myself. I was this little girl, younger of two. I pretended to want to go and walk the dogs with my dad. Then we eventually came back and we sat in the porch and I thought I had only five minutes left, so I sat there and I told him, "Dad, I'm in love with this guy who wants to marry me." My father looked at me. I thought he would be so angry. The only thing he asked is, "Do you love him?" I said, "Yes, I do." He understood immediately. He just hugged me and no questions asked.

Brian Lehrer: That's such a sweet story. So much credit to your mom for the first part of the story because she helped you keep your secret.

Cinzia: Yes. My mother was our advocate. Yes.

Brian Lehrer: Cinzia, thank you so much for sharing that with us. Let me go right on to another one. Jeff in Manhattan, you're on WNYC. You have a love and secret story for us?

Jeff: Yes, sir. Thank you for having me on. I was in my early 20s, living on an island. I met this man on a farm. He was much older than me. I had these feelings in me as I was growing up. When I met him, I fell completely in love with him. It was complicated because I had to keep this whole relationship secret. Basically, we started off as friends and would go on different trips and different things and enjoy each other's company.

Then eventually we were sitting on this giant thing of grass. Like the grass was 5 feet tall, and it was night. All of a sudden all these stars started shooting across the sky. For the first time ever, I gave a man a kiss. There was a lot of pressure because of the different generations of needing to keep it a secret because it would color the way people would look at us or consider us.

Brian Lehrer: I'm going to move you along because we're going to run out of time, but what was the harder secret to keep? That you were more afraid of people knowing or the fact that it was a gay relationship or the fact of the age difference like the earlier caller?

Jeff: It was being, being gay/queer. When I left, I had this beautiful relationship. I had to go back to my hometown and all my family was there and they had no idea. They were like, "How was your trip?" It was billowing up in me and in a tearful moment, I came out to my mother and my whole family in that moment and said that I was in love with-- I ended up saying the secret. It's funny, there was a moment where I was told to keep it secret.

Brian Lehrer: Jeff, I'm going to leave it there because we're going to run out of time in the show, but thank you very much. We could do the whole show on coming out stories if we wanted to do that. Another one, a short one in a text, listener writes, "A girl and I held hands on a bridge until a drunken mob of boys went by. Girl and girl, we scooted away from each other and acted stiff to protect ourselves." There's a little love and secret story just holding hands in secret because it was girl and girl.

Antonio, we've just got a minute left in the show. I thank you for sharing what's known about the story or the legend of Saint Valentine and the origin of the holiday. What were you thinking as you were listening to these beautiful stories from our callers?

Antonio Pagliarulo: Just that they are indeed beautiful stories and how powerful of a day it is and how it brings up that most necessary emotion in all of us. We just can't stop it. That's why I think Saint Valentine resonates with so many of us and at so many different levels.

Brian Lehrer: Antonio Pagliarulo, writer and author of The Evil Eye: The History, Mystery, and Magic of the Quiet Curse and the forthcoming The Queer Saints: A Radical Guide to Magic, Miracles and Modern Intercession. Thanks so much for joining us on this of all days. Happy Valentine's Day to you.

Antonio Pagliarulo: And to you, Brian. Thank you.

Brian Lehrer: And to listeners, to you. All our team loves all of you for listening, calling in, and texting. You know, we do. That's The Brian Lehrer Show for today, produced by those loving producers, Mary Croke, Lisa Allison, Amina Srna, Carl Boisrond, and Esperanza Rosenbaum. Plus Zach Gottehrer-Cohen on our daily politics podcast. Juliana and Milton at the audio controls. Stay tuned for All Of It.

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