Despite my constant questioning, George Dvorsky would never tell me why I interested him so much. Night after night, I would sit at my computer and write him an e-mail. While I recounted the day's events and asked a question or two, I'd stop somewhere in the middle for a reality check. Corresponding with a Broadway star had become one of my rituals. I couldn't go to bed without checking to see what was happening in the theatre world.

Something drew George to his laptop every morning to supply an answer to one or two of my questions, but he never answered the one question that puzzled me most. Maybe he couldn't find the words. Every morning I would race to the computer, hoping he could tell me. My answer didn't come.

* * *

Not surprisingly, my relationship with George has always had an element of mystery to it. He entered my life almost without warning.

It had been a long day, followed by an even longer technical rehearsal for my high school's production of Crazy for You. My bag with my makeup case and character shoes thudded on the kitchen floor when I ran to grab the phone.

"Hello?"
"Is Karen there, please? It's George."
"Dvorsky? You're kidding…"

I covered the receiver in case I couldn't control the urge to scream. How often does a high school junior get a phone call from the man who played The Scarlet Pimpernel on Broadway? I'd written him a letter after having seen him in Pimpernel in June. When we finally met in December, he had asked what I was working on because he wanted to see me perform. I had just been cast in Crazy for You. He said he'd be in touch.

"How are rehearsals going?"
"It's coming together… I'm just exhausted."
"What time do you want me to come on Saturday?"
"We have reservations for dinner at 4:00, if you want to come. How about around 3:30?"
"Sounds wonderful. See you then."

Thanking him, I hung up. My parents stared at me in disbelief. He's really coming? They asked. We're all going to go to dinner?

That's what he said and come he did.

* * *

My friends knew there was something going on the moment I entered the auditorium. No one understood my smile. How could they? Without words, I put on my makeup and replayed the afternoon's events in my head to energize for the performance. George had fit right in at dinner-tasting my sister's fried ravioli and trading me his black olives for my tomato.

I threw a little something extra into my lines that night. Somehow I managed to look excited while dancing on the table during my cameo number, despite my fear of heights. Above the applause came a distinctive whistle, belonging to a certain leading man.

Even today I cannot imagine having been in George's shoes, attending a high school production for a girl he barely knew-sitting among her family members, just as if he'd always been there. Tall, dark, and handsome, he had a tendency to stand out in the crowd—even if he didn't intend to do so.

My drama teacher, Mr. Rousseau, picked him out 30 feet away in his aqua jacket, blue shirt and dress slacks. "I know he's an actor," he said to me at intermission. "Which means he's here to see you. Don't leave until I am introduced."

When the show was over, Mr. Rousseau got his introduction before I left the auditorium. Still half in costume, I walked George to his black VW beetle in the chilly March air- asking my family for a moment alone. Draping his jacket over my shoulders, he warned me against catching cold.

"I'm fine," I told him. "I always get so excited after shows anyway, I hardly notice."
"I know what you mean," he said. "You'll always feel that way. It never gets old, if you're doing what you love."
"Thank you so much for coming. I feel like you're my uncle or something…"
"I like that," he said. "I can be your Uncle George."

* * *

Not even a blizzard could keep me from going to New York. My freshman year of college, George starred in an Off-Broadway show called Pete 'n' Keely. The past two years he attended my school plays, whistling and cheering. Most people went some place warm for spring break, I went to see my uncle.

Maybe if we got deeply enough into a conversation I could get George to tell me his reasons for having adopted me. We'd gotten close enough for him to allow me into his apartment, by myself, in heavy snow-faced with the reality that I may end up spending the night on the couch if the trains weren't running.

He'd made me fresh-squeezed juice while watching the Weather Channel and making plans for lunch. We had to be back by 1 p.m. to walk 12 blocks to the theatre. Meanwhile, we sat on the floor playing with his "son," Ted, an adorable Pomeranian he'd adopted during his run in Anything Goes with Chita Rivera in October. Ted would come with us to the matinee.

One of Olivia Newton John's rare CD's was playing while we entertained Ted. Olivia, or "Livvy" as he calls her, has been his inspiration for years. I smiled as I sat in the living room, but I wondered how it must've looked to people when we walked down the street. What would an actor in his early forties want with a redheaded teenager?

An old friend of George's who had done Passion—his third Broadway show— with him in the 90s joined us for lunch. She certainly didn't understand what he saw in me. She also wanted to know how he continually found work. Virtually unheard of in professional theatre. One percent of equity actors are employed. George had been working non-stop since arriving in 1981 and spending three nights on the couch at the YMCA in midtown waiting to move into his apartment.

"But no one knows who I am," he said.
"We do, and we love you for it," I said. It had taken me 19 years to find someone who truly understood me and took me seriously as a performer.

After the matinee, we dropped Ted off at George's apartment and slid into a booth at the Tick Tock Diner on 34th Street. George answered even my toughest questions.

"Would you do it again?" I asked him.
"Choose to sing you mean?"
"Uh-huh."
"I can think of nothing I would rather do," he said. "But it's ugly. It's an ugly business sometimes-very cutthroat."
"Is it worth it?"
"If there's something else, you can do, do it. If not, if you've decided this is what you have to do, then you have no choice but to go for it. No matter how risky it is."

My parents were afraid of the city. George understood. His mother, Jo, had been the same way. Without him, I probably would have given up on my singing career. How did he stand it when his heart wanted something so badly and the world was saying "no"?

George's mother had said no. Fought him tooth and nail for a year. He was the youngest of her five children. George's father, Frank, died when George was still in high school. But he never forgot his father's love for singing. Though Frank passed this love for music to all of his children, George was the only one to aspire to a career in the arts.

George first considered a career as a veterinarian because he has a deep love for animals. He turned down an offer to study veterinary medicine UPenn as he had originally planned, much to the surprise of his family. Instead, he accepted a spot in Carnegie Mellon's intensive theatre program—one of 10 in his class. Despite disliking the conservatory atmosphere, he stayed for a year and auditioned for Pittsburgh Civic Light Opera's summer season.

When offered a job in the singer's ensemble, as one of six men, he accepted with no regret and joined Actor's Equity Association in the process. Afterward, he got another offer and decided to take the semester off. George never finished college.

"Though I'd like to have gotten a degree, I don't regret doing what I did," he said. "A degree in musical theatre wouldn't have gotten me anywhere but where I am anyway."

When he had completed the first job working for the Pittsburgh CLO, he continued to audition for roles in the singer's ensembles for musicals. It took him only six months to move from chorus roles to smaller male roles, and later to leading roles both on Broadway and in various prestigious regional theatres.

As we nibbled on Cobb salad, my mind drifted back to the email he had sent after seeing me as Rizzo in Grease the year before. If he thought I had such talent, why didn't others want me to pursue singing?

"Patience," he told me. "Your parents want you to do well. They are afraid for you because this is such a risky business. But they'll come— and they'll cry at every curtain—just like my mom did."
"You think so?"
"Of course. But… I've always just missed the big break," he said, having lost a Tony nomination when Gentleman Prefer Blondes had flopped. "I feel like it's out of my hands. You keep raising your hand, hoping you'll be the next one picked to be a star. You've gotta believe that it's going to happen. If you can hang onto that, you'll do fine."
"You think so?"
"Moss Hart once said, 'To make it in this business, you need three things: talent, perseverance, and luck. You can do it with two of those things or you can do it with three, but with one, you'll never make it.'"

I smiled at him as he shoveled a forkful of salad into his mouth.

"How am I doing?" I asked.
"You've got two out of the three that's for sure… and the third, you can't control. But you've had pretty good luck. You found me, didn't you?"
"What if you hadn't been in Pimpernel that day?"
"Everything happens for a reason. Remember that."

But that was all he would say on the subject.

* * *

While I can't afford to visit George most of the places he performs, I almost feel like I travel with him. Once while recording at Abbey Road studios in London, he caught me online. His familiar purple writing popped up in the chat window.

"How was your voice lesson?" he asked. "Did the trick I taught you work?"
"I think so."
"I wanna go home. I'm tired."
"I don't blame you."
"I'm glad you caught me. Are you still having trouble with your breathing?"
"Yeah."
"Breathe into your back. Put your hands on your hips, like when you get angry. Fill that space with air. You'll be able to hold notes for two minutes."
"Really?"
"Go ahead and try it. I'll wait…"
"Wow…."
"I used that today. I had a really long note, and it always works. Practice makes perfect. Besides, it's not brain surgery," he said, dropping a smiley into the chat box before signing off.

Distance has never been a problem for George. If he doesn't have his laptop with him he'll find an internet café, whether he's in Seattle, London or Venice.

And it's not always George's destination that makes for the most interesting conversation. Just ask Rebecca Luker, who recently did a concert series with him in both Nashville and Columbus.

"I was on a plane with him once, returning from a Symphony gig, when I accidentally pressed the seat button on his seat on the plane," she said. "While he was snoozing away, my action caused his seat to fly forward … making George think we were crashing... which sent us into such fits of laughter. We laugh about it to this day."

I can picture him flailing about—limbs waving wildly—and at 6'4" that's dangerous.

However, trying to disguise hysterical laughter while wearing foot-high painter's stilts probably isn't much safer. George was appearing in A Christmas Carol at North Shore Music Theatre in Beverly, Mass. and Maureen Brennan had joined the cast as Mrs Cratchit. One night she made a mistake too large to ignore.

"I was supposed to call Mr. Scrooge an odious, stingy, hard, unfeeling man. I called him a horrible, terrible wonderful man!" Maureen said. "George started to laugh! I had to really steel myself not to look at him or I would have laughed out loud myself. He still talks about my big blunder. He won't let me live it down."

I was sitting in the fifth row. George looked at the floor, and then brought his thumb up to his teeth, his shoulders shaking.

"What were you doing up there with your thumb in your mouth?" I asked when we got backstage.
"I was putting my teeth back in," he said, eyes twinkling. "What would you have done?"

* * *

When I called, George was multi-tasking as usual— washing dishes and making peanut, cashew and almond butters to take to New York where he'd meet with his new voice coach. Over the whirr of the blender, he fielded questions. The most important one had gone unanswered for four-and-a-half years. Rrrrrrrrrttttttttt. Pause. Rrrrrrtttttt. Pause.

I would try it again, just to see if he would budge.

"Why'd you adopt me, George?"
"Why not?"
"Why would an actor in his 40s want anything to do with me?"
"I wasn't in my 40s when I met you," he said, laughing.

I waited.

"Because… you're a young ambitious talent who wants nothing more than to sing. Same thing I did when I was a kid. If I had had someone helping me out, it would've been great."

In Passion, he shared a dressing room with someone who wanted out. Since you never turn down a job without another one waiting, George recommended him for a new production of West Side Story, asking only that his friend help someone else.

George also advocated for David Coffee in Brigadoon. Director, Charlie Repole, wanted to cut a big chunk of Coffee's role at the first rehearsal.

"George… told him I was such a good actor that he should first listen to me read the scene," David said. "Elizabeth Walsh [Coffee's co-star] … said the scene made so much more sense after hearing me do it; Charlie agreed. I have George to thank for letting me play the entire scene."

"That's what this whole life is about," George said. "Helping people out. Not just in show business. Life in general."

While I had him on the phone, I asked how to tell which path I should take because my parents have made sure I kept all my options open. He didn't even have to think.

"You oughta do what you want to do. You gotta go where your heart takes you. I've never said 'I hate my job' to anybody. My business may be frustrating, but I don't hate it."

Even worries about insurance and job security wouldn't stop George from singing. "Every time a job ends, I think I'll never work again… But I know I have a life outside of the business. I've got family and friends who love me and my worth to them is not dependent upon my career."

George's dedication to his work is deeper than that of most people I know. "If I couldn't sing, I'd rather die," he said, while sealing his jars of butters. "My identity is tied up in my voice… When I sing, that's really who I am."

When I hung up, I considered his last remark. People often ask how I juggle journalism and intense voice lessons with a New York coach. I always say the same thing: "I am a singer. With a back-up plan."