“I fell madly in love with Dantzel,” Russell said, “and she made it clear that nobody was going to marry her unless they could do so in the temple. Though she’d known Russell for just a short time, she told them that she had met the man she wanted to marry. In fact, shortly after their first meeting, she made a trip home to Perry, Utah, to visit her parents, Maude Clark White and LeRoy Davis White.

The young premed student began to date the darling girl studying elementary education, and, fortunately, Dantzel felt the same attraction to him. As he left this first meeting, he had a vivid, and perhaps hopeful, feeling come over him: “She was the most beautiful girl I had ever seen,” he said, and he sensed and hoped that she was the girl he would marry. Her name was Dantzel White, and Russell could not believe his good fortune when he learned that the role he had agreed to play was opposite her. “Who is that beautiful girl singing up there?” he asked Plummer. When he walked into the theater for the first rehearsal on April 16, 1942, Russell was instantly fixated on a beautiful brunette onstage who had the most hypnotic soprano voice he’d ever heard. But Plummer persisted, and finally Russell relented. His premed course work was all-consuming. One day in 1942, Gail Plummer recruited Russell to accept a role in the play Hayfoot, Strawfoot he was directing at Kingsbury Hall on the University of Utah campus. In fact, had it not been for his singing voice, he might never have met Dantzel White. Though he learned to read music, he had perfect pitch and an almost uncanny ability to play the piano (and later the organ) by ear-and could do so as well as he could with music in front of him. Among other things, he was talented musically. Russell Nelson’s interests were multifaceted, and his heavy load at the university didn’t keep him from exploring extracurricular activities.

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