Spike Lee Ditched His Date After Laying Eyes on His Future Wife: 'Time Stopped'

Spike Lee has shared the unconventional first date he asked his wife Tonya Lewis Lee on more than 30 years ago.

During a recent interview on Kelly Corrigan wonders podcast, the Oscar winner (67) recalled how he first met his wife (58) in September 1992 and then revealed their unconventional first date.

The two met in Washington, DC, at the Congressional Black Caucus, Lee said, explaining that a trailer for his film was shown at the event. Malcolm X. Lewis Lee went on behalf of his father, who was the treasurer of Philip Morris at the time.

“I had a date that night,” Lee began. “I go to the bathroom and I see this woman coming at me – and I know it might sound corny, but it’s true – time has stopped.”

“I said, ‘Damn it!’ [Laughs] And so later she said the same thing. We just looked at each other and then we couldn’t see each other [each other] more”, the Do the right thing the director recalled.

Spike Lee and wife Tonya Lewis Lee on March 22, 1998 at the Beverly Wilshire Hotel in Beverly Hills, California.

Ron Galella, Ltd./Ron Galella Collection/Getty

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“So the night goes on. You know, I’m there, I have to introduce the trailer for Malcolm X,” Lee said. “And it’s time to go, so we’re leaving — Tonya has her version, I have my version, and then there’s the real version…”

“You know Tonya’s not here, so tell your story,” Corrigan joked.

“I go down the escalator and she goes up the escalator,” Lee continued. “So I’m going down the escalator, I have to think fast. So tell the person I’m with, ‘I think I left my Montblanc pen up there,’ you know, something like that.”

“So I turned around, went back up the escalator and found her and asked her for, you know, her number,” Lee revealed. He then explained that he called her later that week and invited her as a companion to “Madonna’s House Sex book party”, which was not supposed to be in Washington.

The director explained that Lewis Lee was working in a law firm at the time. When she returned to Washington, DC, “everyone” in her office saw her on the news “at a book party,” Lee recalled, joking that she was “caught.”

Spike Lee and Tonya Lewis Lee during the 74th annual Cannes Film Festival on July 12, 2021 in Cannes, France.

Stephane Cardinale – Corbis/Corbis/Getty

Meanwhile, according to Lewis Lee, the director spotted her in the crowd and approached her, showing interest through a series of questions.

“We passed each other. Spike came back into the circle and proceeded to give me the third degree,” she said earlier, per Essence. “‘Are you an actress? A model? A singer? Who are you here with? What do you do? Do you have a boyfriend?’

Within weeks, the director and lawyer were photographed at Lee’s Malcolm X premiere of the film in November 1992.

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Spike Lee and Tonya Lewis Lee during the 74th annual Cannes Film Festival on July 9, 2021 in Cannes, France.

Lionel Hahn/Getty

Later in his podcast interview, Lee praised Lewis Lee’s 2022 Emmy-nominated documentary. Aftershock, which tells the story of two families whose lives change after two young women die in childbirth. Lee said he was “very proud” of her work.

“She’s a filmmaker in her own right and she went to Sarah Lawrence undergrad, UVA Law School,” Lee said, adding that Lewis Lee is doing “what she’s always wanted” to be a “bigger person. She’s doing it now.”

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The couple then married just a year after first meeting, on October 2, 1993, in a church in New York.

The couple have two children, Satchel, 29, and Jackson, 23.

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Source: HIS Education