ALLENTOWN, Pa. – They say what doesn’t kill you makes you stronger. Such is the case for an Allentown couple, whose romance made headlines 40 years ago before hitting the silver screen. Their love story is memorialized in a basement gallery.
“Everything you see is a memory,” said Tony Toto.
This year, Tony and his wife, Frances, will celebrate 57 years of marriage.
“We have been blessed that we had all these years, there was that one time when we had a rough time,” said Tony.
When Tony says they had a rough time, he’s putting it mildly.
The year was 1983. Tony and Frances had four kids and a pizza shop, but then Tony strayed from the marriage, and Frances found out.
What happened next is like something out of a movie. Hollywood thought so, too, turning the Totos’ troubles into a feature film called “I Love You to Death.”
While not everything in the movie is accurate, Frances did hire teenage hitmen to help her try to kill Tony five times, including failed attempts to blow up his car and attack him with a baseball bat.
One night, Frances put a bottle of sleeping pills in Tony’s food and then the hitmen shot him.
“Twice, one in the back of my head, and one of the bullets went right through my chest,” said Tony.
“I don’t think I was thinking straight,” said Frances. “It was like it was like a love-hate kind of a thing.”
Because of the pills, Tony’s system slowed down. He was in a daze and said he didn’t feel a thing, believing Frances when she told him he had the flu.
After five days, the police found out about the plot and arrested Frances and the teenage hitmen.
Tony spent 12 days in the hospital. The first thing he did when he was discharged was bail out Frances.
“We both cry and we say to each other, ‘You know, from now on, let’s talk. Let’s talk. Let’s communicate better,'” Tony said. “Something that we should’ve done before, so that was what was missing.”
Tony and Frances said that tearful moment was a new beginning for their relationship, and to help them stay on track, they got counseling.
But Frances had to pay for what she did, spending four years in prison. Frances and Tony talked on the phone every day.
Then, in 1990, there was a silver lining to their dark cloud. “I Love You to Death” hit theaters. It was a big hit. Siskel and Ebert gave it two thumbs up.
Tony and Frances traveled to movie premieres around the world and were featured in thousands of newspaper and magazine articles.
Forty years later, things are much quieter.
Tony assembled the gallery as proof that, like one of the headlines in the Toto gallery says, “love conquers all.”
The couple said they know their situation is one in a million and many people won’t agree with it or understand it. And while they stopped talking publicly about what happened long ago, they wanted to share their story now as an extreme example of the importance of communication in a marriage.
The Totos are an unusual situation that happened 40 years ago.
If you or a loved one is being abused, or you’re afraid for your safety, help is available.
You can call the National Domestic Violence Hotline at 1-800-799-SAFE. That’s 1-800-799-7233.
You can also chat with someone anonymously at the National Domestic Violence Hotline website.