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Katie Ornelas bought what she thought was a jazz record at a thrift store in Austin. When she got home and took the vinyl out of its sleeve, she was confused.

“I was shocked that it said, ‘Phil and Donna’s wedding,’” said Ornelas, who was sitting in her living room with her two daughters, ages 13 and 11. The wedding date was also written on the record: Aug. 21, 1966.

Katie Ornelas

She was even more stunned when she played the record. After welcoming everyone to the bride and groom’s wedding, a rabbi began chanting in Hebrew. Ornelas had never been to a Jewish wedding. She and her daughters listened excitedly, including to the ritual of the groom breaking a glass at the end.

“The tradition is so beautiful,” Ornelas said. “We thought it was the coolest thing.”

Ornelas also realized something right away: “We knew it was someone’s treasured moment. … When you hear the album, you can just hear the love,” she said. “The more I got to think about it, I just knew it was donated by accident.”

Ornelas, a jazz lover, often picks up vintage records at secondhand shops. Last month, she grabbed one in a sleeve for the “The Modern Jazz Quartet at Music Inn” — a live album by an American jazz group, recorded in 1956. It turned out to be the misplaced wedding recording. The day she got the record, she went to several stores — including two Goodwill locations and an <a href="https://www.austinpetsalive.org/shop/thrift" target=_blank>Austin Pets Alive</a> — and she isn’t sure in which one she bought it. She purchased the record for between $2 and $4.

“I thought it was going to be a great record,” said Ornelas, who uses a<a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/home/2023/08/08/tips-shopping-record-player-turntable/" target="_blank"> standard record player</a> she bought online to play vinyls. “It turned out even better than I thought.”

She decided she needed to track down Phil and Donna — or at least find their relatives — to return the record.

“I just knew it was important,” Ornelas said. Plus, she added, “I love a good mystery.”

But she wasn’t sure where to start. She got in touch with Kelsey Thompson, a reporter with KXAN-TV, an Austin news station, who agreed to help her with her search. Thompson wrote <a href="https://www.kxan.com/news/local/austin/how-an-austin-thrift-store-find-sparked-search-for-1966-wedding-couple/" target="_blank">a story</a> that got the ball rolling, and she<b> </b>also checked wedding records in Texas to see whether she could find any couples named Phil and Donna who were married on that date. She could not.

“We knew they were from out of state,” said Ornelas, adding that they emailed several synagogues, too, to see whether anybody knew the couple.

Shortly after the story aired, a childhood friend of Phil and Donna’s daughter heard about the story and alerted their daughter, Lauren, to it. The couple — Phil and Donna Schmidt — were flabbergasted by the finding.

“It was a complete shock. We were absolutely floored,” said Donna Schmidt, whose daughter texted her a picture of the wedding record on Nov. 16. “I looked at it and recognized it immediately.”

At first, Donna Schmidt was perplexed by how her wedding vinyl ended up in the hands of a stranger. Then she connected the dots.

When she and her husband received the vinyl after their wedding, she said, it was in a flimsy paper cover.

“At some point, we put it in that jazz cover to protect it,” she said.

The Schmidts wed when they were both in college — Phil was in graduate school at Stanford and Donna was an undergraduate student at Berkeley. They got married in Los Altos Hills, California.

“I don’t think people did videos back then; they just did audio,” said Donna Schmidt, explaining that the recording included only their ceremony. Aside from their photo album, the vinyl is the only memento they have from their wedding.

The couple moved to Austin in 1970. Phil Schmidt became a mechanical engineering professor at the University of Texas, where he taught for more than four decades.

The Schmidts — who have three adult children and four grandchildren — moved to a retirement community in Denver in March 2022 to be close to their daughter and her family. Given that they were downsizing, they hired an estate sale company to clear out whatever they left behind — including a cabinet full of records.

“We did that, not realizing that the wedding album was still in it,” Donna Schmidt said. “I wonder what else we accidentally left behind.”

Because the vinyl was stored in a jazz sleeve, Schmidt said, the couple didn’t realize what was inside. Their children, each of whom stopped by the house to sift through old belongings, didn’t spot it, either.

Since the Ornelases found the record, they’ve been communicating with the Schmidts, and they’ve become fast friends.

“I just can’t believe that I get to be a part of this story,” Ornelas said. “It’s been a really joyous journey for me and my family.”

“I’m thrilled to get this back in time for our 59th anniversary,” Donna Schmidt said. “It’s really amazing.”

Ornelas and her family are meeting the Schmidts’ son, daughter-in-law and granddaughter for dinner over Thanksgiving weekend while they are visiting Austin. They will give the record to them in person.

“I can’t wait,” said Ornelas, who recently celebrated her 16th wedding anniversary with her husband. She said she looks to the Schmidts as role models for a healthy marriage.

“I love that this happened right before Thanksgiving. We have extra blessings this year,” said Donna Schmidt, adding that her rabbi did a sermon on the story last week. “The whole thing is so sweet.”

As soon as they get the vinyl back, she said, they plan to digitize it and play it for their family.

In addition to new friendships, the story yielded something else for Ornelas. Knowing she was a jazz fan, one of the rabbis whom Ornelas got in touch with when she was trying to find the Schmidts invited her to his jazz performance on Nov. 20. She enthusiastically accepted his invite.

The Schmidts said they’re planning to spend time with Ornelas and her family on their next visit to Austin.

“I can’t wait to meet her,” Donna Schmidt said. “She sounds like an incredible person.”

Donna Schmidt said she and her husband are well aware that most people in Ornelas’s position would have tossed their wedding record in the trash. They feel lucky she was the one who found it.

“There are really good, kind, compassionate people in the world,” Donna Schmidt said. “We can all learn from them.”

McGill University, BA

Columbia University, MS in journalism 

Sydney Page is a staff reporter who writes for The Washington Post’s Inspired Life section, a collection of stories about humanity. She has been a contributor to The Post since 2018.

Sydney Page

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