By Jonathan Hoffman

Medill Reports

The 2024 Paris Games wrapped up last week, and the next Olympics will be in Los Angeles again after 44 years. Thousands of fans, athletes and volunteers will travel to the city to celebrate the 2028 Olympic Games.

While gold balloons, orchestral music and world-class athletic performances filled the eyes and ears of millions across LA during the 1984 Olympic Games, it was budding love and synchronized harmonies that consumed UCLA choir couple Michelle and Steve Hoisch.

“You could probably say the Olympics were part of what solidified our relationship,” Michelle Hoisch said.

They met in the university choir and started dating in Westwood at the UCLA campus that spring. When choir members were asked to participate in the Olympic honor choir, the couple jumped at the opportunity.

“It was the happiest place on the planet – 100,000 people (in the L.A. Memorial Coliseum) who were just totally delighted to be there,” Michelle Hoisch said.

The Soviet Union boycotted the Olympics that year, so the United States was primed to win big without their longtime international rival there, and won a record 83 gold medals.

Steve Hoisch said he felt bad for anyone in Los Angeles who decided to leave town during the Olympics, likening it to Dodgers fans leaving before Kirk Gibson hit his 1988 World Series game-winning home run.

MLB 1988 WS Game 1: Kirk Gibson’s dramatic game-winning home run

The couple’s engagement party was the night of that home run, and Steve Hoisch joked it was Gibson’s gift to them. The Hoisches celebrated their 35th anniversary this June, and it was the 1984 Los Angeles Olympics that kickstarted it all.

“Westwood was our playground. We would walk through the village, singing and harmonizing together,” Steve Hoisch said. “We were young kids in love, and life couldn’t have been any better.”

Jonathan Hoffman is a sports media graduate student at Medill. You can follow him on X and LinkedIn.