When It Comes to Dining With Kings, Presidents, Couple Have Big Edge

Talk about a power couple. When President and Mrs. Reagan dined at the $50,000-per-person luncheon at the William Lyon home in Coto de Caza four weeks ago, Roger Johnson, chief executive officer of Western Digital, sat at the same table as the First Lady. His wife, Janice, sat with the President.

Then, when Sweden’s King Carl XVI Gustaf and Queen Silvia lunched at the Center Club in Costa Mesa last week as guests of Renee and Henry Segerstrom, Roger sat next to the queen. Janice sat beside the king.

No other Orange County couple can lay claim to supping at both tables.

What’s up? The common denominator turns out to be the Orange County Performing Arts Center. Through their own generous involvement there, the Johnsons--Roger is on the Center’s executive board, Janice is active in its Guilds support group--have come to know the Lyons and the Segerstroms. (Lyon is also a board member and Segerstrom is board chairman.) All have become fast friends.

But there’s more. “I think they invited us to sit at their tables because of my husband,” said Janice, a humble sort. “He knows business.” Johnson knows business, all right. Western Digital--a computer-system manufacturing company--climbed aboard the Fortune 500 list recently. Revenues this year have already hit the $750-million mark. And Johnson projects revenues of $1 billion during the next fiscal year.

Not bad for a couple who have only been in Orange County since 1982. Not bad at all.

On a wing and a prayer: Well, the “Gone with the Wind” bash tossed by the Angels of the Arts support group of the Performing Arts Center Saturday night was almost gone with the wind. As the Angels--many dressed to look like Scarlett O’Hara--and their spouses arrived, it was gusty on the hill at Coto de Caza, site of William Lyon’s Tara-like mansion. A grim cloud cover hugged distant mountaintops. And, as Lyon viewed the bleak horizon with Randy Johnson, owner of Hemingway’s (gala caterer) he piped: “Dooooooo something!”

As luck would have it, after the cocktail reception held inside Lyon’s Classic Automobile Museum, the Old Glory that had been whipping up a storm in front of the mansion “had gone dead limp,” Johnson said. “The skies had cleared. The stars were out and there was a full, white moon”--a show-biz kind of backdrop for dining by the pool on roast pork with apple sauce.

One guest, Kit Toth of Big Canyon--who wore a replica of Scarlett’s barbecue dress--had watched a video of “Gone With the Wind” the day before. “To see how Scarlett maneuvered her hoop,” she said. Another guest, developer Al Baldwin of Emerald Bay, came in blackface. “He was the butler,” said his wife, Deeann, who wore a slinky yellow sequin gown accented with huge peonies. Another guest was Elaine Heinz, whose husband, Clifford, is a grandson of H.J. Heinz, the ketchup heir. (Clifford never got into ketchup, he said. He’s a retired industrialist.) Clifford loved his wife in her demure, blue gown. “She looked more like Melanie than Scarlett,” he said. “But Melanie was my favorite. Scarlett was fascinating and exciting, but Melanie was lovely as well as reliable and dependable.”

‘I don’t’: The prince turned into a frog for a Newport Beach woman Saturday, when, after a priest asked her would-be husband if he would “take her for his wedded wife,” he barked “no!” and marched down the aisle with his family close behind. In less than 20 minutes, the caterers turned what was to be a six-course wedding feast into a three-course family reunion.

While the bride stayed in her private room at Rancho Capistrano--”shattered,” said a sympathetic caterer--her family (many of whom flew from New Jersey for the occasion) dined in a “very subdued” atmosphere. “I hope to God I never experience something like that again,” the caterer said. “It was a tragedy.”

Why did it happen? “Well, I think the girl looks at the world through rose-colored glasses. And I think he may have lied to her during their courtship. And, when it came to the bottom line, the groom got scared. He was afraid that her well-to-do family would see him for what he was.”

A costly mistake. The wedding had a price tag of $25,000.