{"id":1078624,"date":"2026-10-30T14:00:42","date_gmt":"2026-10-30T12:00:42","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.rri.ro\/?p=1078624"},"modified":"2026-11-05T08:56:43","modified_gmt":"2026-11-05T06:56:43","slug":"the-wedding-of-leresti","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.rri.ro\/en\/voices-from-the-archives\/the-wedding-of-leresti-id1078624.html","title":{"rendered":"The wedding of Leresti"},"content":{"rendered":"
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In the summer of <\/span>1973, <\/span>Leresti, <\/span>a <\/span>remote<\/span> mountain village <\/span>in communist Romania <\/span>was the site of a most unusual event:<\/span> an American couple<\/span> were getting married <\/span>in this village and according to <\/span>Romanian tradition: <\/span>journalist <\/span>Harry Morgan <\/span>and his partner <\/span>Catherine Devlin.\u00a0<\/span><\/span>F<\/span>oreign guests <\/span>were <\/span>flown in to attend the ceremony, <\/span>local officials were in attendance, and folk musicians provided the entertainment for the <\/span>guests and the many village residents who showed up in <\/span>traditional ware<\/span>. <\/span><\/span><\/p>\n

The event was all the more remarkable as <\/span>ordinary Romanians had little <\/span>opportunity<\/span> of travelling abroad <\/span>in those days<\/span>, especially to countr<\/span>ies<\/span> in the West, <\/span>as the communist authorities <\/span>heavily restricted foreign travel <\/span>for its citizens. They <\/span>weren\u2019t so rigid, however, when it came to western travellers visiting Romania. <\/span>O<\/span>n the contrary, <\/span>t<\/span>his was a time when the Socialist Republic of Romania, led by Nicolae Ceausescu, was actively encouraging foreign tourism, branding itself as an affordable, <\/span>picturesque<\/span> destination, <\/span>as part of efforts to engage with the West <\/span>and<\/span> distance itself from the influence of the USSR. <\/span><\/span><\/p>\n

The groom himself was no ordinary American. He was a journalist, founder of the World Press Institute and of the Friendship <\/span>Ambassadors <\/span>programme <\/span>and had interviewed the Romanian president Nicolae Ceausescu. His<\/span> wedding <\/span>to Catherine Devlin was widely covered by the press, with scores of <\/span>international and Romanian <\/span>reporters dispatched to Leresti to report on the festivities. Among them <\/span>was <\/span>Radio Bucharest’s <\/span>Tibor Tomcs\u00e1nyi, who recorded every stage of the wedding ceremony <\/span>and<\/span> put together an exciting 30-minute-long documentary <\/span>which today can be found <\/span>in Radio Romania\u2019s archives.\u00a0<\/span><\/span><\/p>\n<\/div>\n