Diana Maggi and Juan Carlos Dual met in 1969. Both clearly remembered the first time they had seen each other: Dual stood at the door of the Astral Theater with fellow actor Joe Rígoli and director Onofre Lovero, all members of the comedy. The story of the twine.

The three were waiting for Maggi’s arrival and were talking about her, whom they did not know. “What, this one of mine is half planted, right?” Dual asked. Concilianti, Rígoli and Lovero told him that this was not the case, that “it is a good mine, calm as the water of a cistern, even if a little extroverted, like a good tanager”.

At that precise moment a car stopped in a double row in Viale Corrientes and an angry woman got out, her eyes burning, the cricket in her hand, ready to become a blunt weapon, and the voice that shrieked insults into a scream, because a man had tried to occupy the place she had chosen to park.

“What – Dual asked – isn’t that girl Diana Maggi?”. Joe Rigoli looked away and murmured: “I think so.”

get to know each other

Once rehearsals began, Diana Maggi continued to accumulate credit for refuting those who called her a quiet woman. According to Dual, “I brought a tape recorder to learn some songs that were played during work, and when I turned it on she confronted me: ‘Why do you put the tape recorder on? Please take it out.’ Immediately I thought: ‘ What test will we do? To do! ‘.

With the tape recorder stowed away and after a glance from him at her, who didn’t take offense, Diana found that she didn’t like Juan Carlos at all; just the opposite.

“The cold started running down my back. It was like some kind of crushso I started to soften my way of being, because at the beginning I had treated him badly “, recalled the actress.

From that moment on, she dedicated her gazes to him, penetrating, suggestive, almost invitations to share something more than hours of work. He seemed unrecognized for a month, until one day he decided to invite her for a coffee.

“He talked to me about theater, literature and then took me home,” Diana recalled. Later there were other cafes, dinners, a few trips to the cinema, but never a handshake, a hug, a caress. He wants to be my friend, she thought. But he was wrong: Dual took his time to study the ground he wanted to play on. After two months of flirting, he decided to hold on.

“I invited her to dance in a bowling alley that was across from the River Court and that day our love story began“, he recalled in an old interview with Clarione.

In the beginning it was yes, no, that I need a little more time for myself, that I want to be with you always and you don’t feel the same …

Juan Carlos lived alone and the nights in which he allied us with his friends were few. Distrustful, fearful that her boyfriend would go into someone else’s arms, she called him on the phone at two, three, four in the morning. She never answered, or rather, she was never at home to answer calls. The next day, he told her that he had gone out to buy e cigarettes Diana wanted to eat it raw.

“We dated for a year and a half, then we separated for two, we had an idyll again for a year, we drifted apart for another three years and finally in 1976 we decided to move in together in a chalet on General Paz and Tres de Febrero, in Nuñez “.

opposite poles

It was cheerful, bubbly, pure dynamite. Instead he was introverted, thoughtful, much more serious and “bastard”, as he put it. She was from Boca, he from River. Maggi and Dual were something like the “irregular couples” paradigm, the attraction of oppositesthe Bible and the stove.

They never married or had children., but they took it as mere circumstances of life. “We don’t believe in religious ceremony. There is a much more important word commitment between us than law or rites,” she said and she agreed.

They have worked together on several occasions, such as plays we tell lies Y Come for the notice?in addition to television programs such as weddings and more.

Economically they have always managed independently, each with their own current account. “It’s all scattered, because if anything ever happens to us as a couple, we don’t want there to be any problems. She also knows that what’s mine is hers and I that what’s hers is mine,” explained Juan Carlos.

And she added: “I don’t like supported women, because sometimes they stay with their partner just because they don’t have a place to go. It’s not our case, because she has always worked, but we always thought the best thing was for each to manage their own money “.

love and admiration

According to Diana Maggi, “Juan Carlos is one of a kind. He is part of a race of men that is now extinct. He is polite, respectful, a gentleman. I am deeply in love with him.”

More reserved and less expansive, Juan Carlos simply added: “The feeling is mutual”. And he stressed that in all the years of coexistence they have never encountered an insult. “Respect is essential. Between two people who love each other there can be no abuse. If I’m angry about something, the best I can do is raise the tone. We argue, but never with your claws out.”

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