The Most Romantic Story Ever Told

By Michael Egan

One warm summer evening 30 years ago, a lonely Aloha Airlines pilot strolled into the Halekulani Hotel in Waikiki. The faint strains of slack-key music reached his ears and, wandering down to the beach, he came upon the most beautiful woman he’d ever seen, in a yellow dress and lei, performing a graceful hula. Behind her the blood-red sun sank gradually away. Like the evening sky, the dancer had an inner glow, a radiance that quite captivated his heart. First Officer John Miller watched entranced, and as the stars winked into life, so did his love. He knew, without the slightest hesitation, that Kanoelehua Kaumeheiwa was destined to be his wife.

As she lifted her arms in an eloquent gesture, however, he saw her ring: a gleaming two-carat diamond that shone and glittered like a No Entry sign. It said unmistakably: I’m taken—kapu! Perhaps she wasn’t his destiny after all: she was already someone else’s wife. Still, he remained captivated by her charm.

Like all great love stories, this one has a happy ending. For over two years First Officer Miller admired from afar. “I’d come down to the Halekulani every night and watch her dance,” he says. “Sometimes I even brought my dates!” Still radiantly lovely, Kanoe sips tea quietly at his side in the Halekulani’s verandah area, and nods. They’ve been married now for 28 years. “Then one day I read an interview she gave in a local magazine. It was clear that actually she was single.”

“Well, they asked me to describe my ideal man,” Kanoe explains. “I said he should be very generous of spirit, mind and soul, liberal in his social attitudes, and not jealous or possessive. As a hula dancer, I encourage my audience to fall in love with me every night. In that way, I try to include them in the emotional moments of the music. My partner needs to understand that and not feel threatened.”

John has a ready laugh. “Soon as I saw that interview I told myself, that man is me! I’m generous of spirit, liberal, and not in the least possessive!” A friend arranged a meeting with Kanoe soon afterward, and the two hit it off almost immediately. She thought John was “very handsome,” but it was his words that caught her attention. “When he said he was the man I’d described, it piqued my interest,” she says. “Yes, I was engaged, but obviously there was a void. John made me feel there was something else to go for.”

But princesses are not so easily won, especially when betrothed to someone else. Kanoe refused to date John, though she did allow him to escort her to her car, a one-minute walk. He was there again the next night, and the next. The minute walk became an hour’s talk, then two, though they never kissed or even held hands. Their early friendship was a drawing together of personalities, a marriage of true minds. They discussed their dreams, hopes, attitudes and ambitions.

The more they talked, the closer they became. “What appealed to me was that he responded to the interior me, not just the superficial part,” says Kanoe with a graceful gesture, a hula dancer pointing the meaning of a phrase. “My fiancé and I were like this,” holding her hands parallel, “but John and I were like this.” She laces her fingers.

And then one evening he impulsively declared his love. “I was convinced we were right for each other, so I just told her I was in love.”

Kanoe smiles at the memory. “And I said, you’re just infatuated with the girl on the stage.”

John’s answer changed everything. A different reply, and perhaps it would have been all over. “You can ask me if I was infatuated with you 40 years from now,” he said, “when you’re cooking my pancakes!”

“I was just speechless,” Kanoe says, still a little shocked. “He was assuming I was going to marry him, he had me cooking for him and married for 40 years, and I hadn’t even kissed him! I was flabbergasted. I just had to go home.”

Like this pivotal episode, their relationship has always been a matter of communication, of the right words in the right place. On that distant evening 30 years ago, a corner was turned. Kanoe drove home in confusion and excitement. She broke up with her fiancé soon afterward, and became Mrs John Miller in April, 1980.

Communication is Everything
John’s and Kanoe’s tale is almost story-book perfect: handsome airline pilot falls in love with a Hawaiian beauty queen and professional hula dancer—but she’s committed to another! However, he wins her hand and they live happily ever after. It’s the most romantic story ever told.

Driving their Corvette around the mainland on their honeymoon in 1980

What’s more, in a world of crumbling marriages, theirs has been a successful survivor. One gets the sense that their relationship is as strong now, perhaps even more, than at the start. Each is comfortably responsive to the other’s moods and feelings, completing thoughts, memories and anecdotes. She is more obviously the star, he merely her husband (as he modestly puts it in the notes to their video, about which more in a moment), but their partnership is well balanced, like a song in tune.

I ask them for their secret. “Communication,” John unhesitatingly replies, which sounds cliché until they begin to elaborate. “We can almost read each other’s minds,” he continues, and Kanoe adds: “We care about what the other person thinks or feels.”

Later he comments: “She really knows me, all my idiosyncrasies.” Again she echoes, “I often say that he knows me, who I am, and still likes me! He was really the first man I ever met who was capable of that, so understanding. John has great confidence in himself. He just knows who he is. I like that. He allows me to be me.”

They don’t own a TV, preferring to spend time together, especially in the evenings. “We try to listen to each other,” Kanoe says. “We ask, how was your day? I also try to go the extra distance to make our house inviting. People always say it’s such a romantic house. I try to make nice little spaces to sit and talk. We always have fresh flowers placed around the house.”

John is invariably in the audience when Kanoe performs, and remains her Number One fan. He’s thought a lot about her performing style. “People recognize that in her dance she’s speaking to them about the love they feel. Each song has a soul to it, what the composer put in. What Kanoe does is enter the other person’s heart. She’s able to capture that, and those who are seeking, find it. Her hulas are not just about the little grass shack.”

Kanoe has also thought about her art. “I build on traditional Hawaiian motions,” she stresses. “My teacher, Auntie Ma’iki Aiu Lake, taught me that. After all, I’ve been doing it for 30 years and have this huge repertoire of hundreds of songs. I choreograph as I go, simply letting the music take me.”

So it’s largely spontaneous? “Yes, sometimes I don’t even know what the music will be. The band just lets the mood of the night take them, and I pick up on what they’re doing. I try to give 100 percent, my absolute best, each time I go out there.”
“And of course she does,” John says.

After a performance in the Andy Bumatai Show in 1981

Conflicts
I ask them if they ever argue, and am relieved to hear that they do. In fact, they seem like quite a normal couple in this regard. How do they handle things when they get tough?

Well,” says Kanoe, “We have an argument, very passionate, then it’s silent for about two days. We’re both quiet types, we sulk.” John looks amused. “Yes, it’s quiet for a while until I apologize!” We all laugh at that. Kanoe goes on: “Usually what breaks it is hunger, the need to eat. We go out. I’ll come to him the following morning and ask him, you wanna go eat? And usually while we’re eating, a cup of coffee and some French toast, we talk about it.”

Does John ever get jealous of the attention Kanoe receives from her audience? Not at all, he says, adding wryly: “The only thing is when I take her to a Kevin Costner movie!”

Kanoe lets John know that there are often men in the audience she considers good looking but his relaxed attitude allows her to express it. Surprisingly enough, it’s John who is the flirtatious one. “He openly admires beautiful women,” Kanoe says. “But I like that. He flirts with them, with cute waitresses, he tells them they’re pretty, but I think that means he’s alive. I know he adores me.”

“Of course I never follow up on the flirting,” John puts in. “Jealousy has never come up in our relationship.”

After this, I want to know if they fight fair, and both say they do. “Actually we don’t argue much at all,” says John. “We also don’t dredge up stuff from the past, we just keep it where it is.”

The Future
I remind them that this is Generations Hawaii, and wonder about their plans for the future. Kanoe is emphatic about not retiring. “I’m not ready to stop doing what I’m doing now,” she says.

John sees it that way too, though he has obviously considered the matter. “Kanoe is frequently asked to teach, but as long as she has the stature of a performer that’s where she’ll be. On the other hand, since 9/11 there’ve been a lot of changes. Here at Halekulani some fine musicians are no longer performing. So we thought perhaps we should start capturing what she does.”

He holds up a shiny DVD featuring a colorful picture of Kanoe on the cover. “I’ve been bugging her to do a movie for sometime,” John says. “This is the first example.” It’s called Kanoe Miller: Romantic Waikiki Hula, starring the lady backed by The Hiram Olsen Trio and guest-artist Gary Aiko. The music derives mostly from the golden era of Hawaiian music, 1915 to 1965, a conscious effort to memorialize a genre slowly passing into oblivion.

Producing and marketing the video meant founding a new company called Tropical Baby Productions. John describes himself as its producer, director, editor, chauffeur and pilot. He has had to deal with all the technological challenges posed, including directing the production crew, editing, packaging, marketing and distribution. “It’s story-telling mixed with dance,” he explains. “And it’s been selling pretty well. People see that it’s a nice gift.”

“I feel it has the essence of Hawaii,” adds Kanoe. “Tourists love it and locals love it too.”

Their next target market is Japan, a country they visit often. “We might make 9 or ten more movies,” John says. “Different song types, associated with different eras. There are lots of themes, tons of them.”

At the end of our interview they walk me to my car, on the way passing a neatly kept lawn shaded from the afternoon sun. “That’s where it was,” John says, stopping. “She parked her car here in those days. This is almost exactly where we had our first one-minute talk.”

With a small smile Kanoe takes his arm and we move on.