My mother Emma Lampert Meyer died in May 1998, just shy of 90. Part of her legacy was her, shall we say, archives. Which wound up at our house — two boxes of photos, letters and mementoes — where they have languished for 28 years — until now, when we are lately on a mission to declutter.

Among her papers, I found a faded, folded newspaper page from the tabloid London Daily Mail dated Sept. 11, 1970. After their retirement, my parents, on NYC school teacher pensions, traveled abroad, including to London, so I assume how it got there. The story was only incidentally but primarily about Cousin Andre Previn (his grandfather and my great grandfather were brothers) and his then wife Mia Farrow.

As those who follow me may know, I have been working on a biography of my musical polymath cousin Andre, born in Berlin on April 6, 1929, died in New York City in February 28, 2019, winner of four Oscars and ten Grammys, recipient of the Kennedy Center Honors, and knighted by Queen Elizabeth II. There is even a Sirius FM Andre Previn station, and he is occasionally the answer to a crossword puzzle, most recently April 3 in The New York Times.

Andre famously distanced himself from his wider family, but he was always sort of a sidebar within my immediate family, the distant cousin who was tabloid fodder, married and divorced five times, mostly notably to Mia, with whom he had three biological and more adopted children. At the time of this story, he was the principal conductor of the London Symphony Orchestra, at the peak of his classical career in his early 40s, and, the paper said, “the pin-up boy of British music.” Every British household, I was told, owned at least one of Andre’s many LPs.

Marriages made in London…

In London, in June 1970, Mia, not quite 25, had given birth to their twins, and three months later, on September 11, they tied the knot. They were married in Rosslyn Hill Unitarian Church in the London borough of Hampstead that Andre had chosen.

Mia’s sister Steffi was her maid of honor, and Andre’s best man was Jim Kronen, Steffi’s fiancé, an American artist. Steffi’s wedding was three days later in the same place, with Andre playing the organ. If Andre and Mia’s wedding had been discretely private, Steffi and Jim’s was not, filling an entire page in the tabloid London Daily Mirror on Sept. 14. Were it not for Andre and Mia, the event would not have been newsworthy. But there they were, stealing the show.

In large type, the top-of-the-page headline practically shouted, “THE WEDDING MAESTRO.” Subhead: “Previn is the best man, the church organist, and he gave the bride away.” And the lede said, “A wedding in a tiny country church became something of a stage spectacular yesterday.”

It went on to describe Andre as “the pin-up boy of British music.” Andre’s gardener and the bride’s mother “decorated the church with lots of brightly-coloured chrysanthemums from Andre’s L30,000 farmhouse home a mile away… Afterwards, the happy couple were showered with confetti at the church door by Andre and Mia and Maureen.” On both days, the brides had made flower wreathes for their hair and wore the same dress. Their mother, Maureen O’Sullivan, attended both weddings.

There were no other guests. But, at least at Steffi and Jim’s, there was ample media.

Thanks to my mother’s treasure trove of mementoes, I know all about it, and now so do you.