Former BJ and current PD entertainment critic Mark Dawidziak and wife Sara Showman first met as co-stars in 1981 rehearsals for Neil Simon’s “The Good Doctor.”

 

That led to their 1982 marriage, 33 years ago as of Oct. 9, and living happily ever after in Cuyahoga Falls.

 

Writes Mark:

“We're still billed as co-stars, in life and on stage.”

Sharing the limelight is Becky, their daughter.

Mark is a New York City (Long Island) guy living in Cuyahoga Falls after a stint in Tennessee journalism who impersonates Mark Twain better than Samuel Langhorne Clemens, does a wickedly terrifying Edgar Allan Poe show, regurgitates Charles Dickens like the dickens, should wear a rumpled raincoat for his work on his “Columbo” book that Peter Falk loved; and has reincarnated the Civil War in his productions with Sara.

 

He has performed his show at the Twain House & Museum in Hartford, Connecticut and the famous Barter Theatre in Virginia (admission was groceries, including ham for the hams). And teaches a class at Kent State.

 

Mark’s writings include 12 books and insightful entertainment columns in the PD. Losing Mark and Terry Pluto may have been the BJ’s greatest losses to the PD.

 

Mark is justifiably in the Cleveland Press Club’s Journalism Hall of Fame.

Mark lengthy authorship includes “Mark Twain’s Guide to Diet, Exercise, Beauty, Fashion, Romance, Health and Happiness,”  “Mark Twain’s Ohio,” “Mark My Words,”  “Mark Twain on Writing,” the 1994 horror novel, “Grave Secrets”; two histories of landmark TV series, “The Columbo Phile: A Casebook” and “The Night Stalker Companion”; and “The Bedside, Bathtub & Armchair Companion to Dracula.”

Mark and Sara formed the Largely Literary Company and have done Twain, Dickens, Poe and the Civil War, together and separately, in libraries and at the Barter Theatre and Twain House & Museum.

Congratulations, Mark and Sara. You’ve had a longer run than “Oklahoma!”