VIVIAN AND RON JOSEPH HEAR THE CHEERS AGAIN AS THEIR OLYMPIC MEDAL SAGA IS RESOLVED by AMY ROSEWATER
For much of the past 50 years, Viv-
ian and Ron Joseph had not given much thought to their lives as figure skaters. A half century ago, the sister-broth- er pairs team had been good. Quite good, actually. Tey had won a national title, competed in the Olympics and closed their competitive careers with a silver medal, finishing behind the legendary Protopopovs, at the World Champion- ships.
“But you have to understand one
thing,” Ron, now a doctor, tried to ex- plain. “Tere are a lot of people whose lives are in skating. But my sister and I had our period of time in skating, and then we went on a different path.” Tat different path took them far
away from the sport, but their unusual link to Olympic history ultimately would bring them back in.
After hanging up her skates, Vivian
worked in her family’s business, one of the first in Chicago to sell nonfood items (such as panty hose) to grocery stores. Ron headed to medical school, eventually becoming an orthopedic surgeon. Although Vivian’s close friends and
Ron’s four adult children certainly knew that figure skating had been a part of their lives, skating rarely entered their conver- sations. Tere were some hints dropped along the way, like when Ron took his wife, Krista, on a skating date early in their courtship. Ron had told Krista that he was an Olympian, but she didn’t think much about it. Plus, she had brought her young children along, and they certainly were oblivious to Ron’s skating talents. “My kids were young, and they
didn’t know who I was dating,” Krista said. “I knew he had a bronze medal, but then he goes out and does a huge jump, and we were all like, ‘Wow!’ We went back to his house and saw his Olympic bronze medal.” Ron and Krista later married and had a daughter, Alianna. Born under the Arizona sun, Alianna had tried skating as a toddler, but she never took to the sport and gravitated to a more common desert sport: swim- ming. Te concept of having a father who competed in the Olympics as a figure skater was as foreign to young
Ron and Vivian Joseph returned to the ice together for the first time in 50 years when they attended the 2015 U.S. Championships in Greensboro, North Carolina, in January. There, they were officially recognized for the first time as the 1964 Olympic pairs bronze medal- ists, after a half century of confusion and uncertainty over the results.
28 JUNE-JULY 2015
JAY ADEFF/U.S. FIGURE SKATING
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