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WINSTON-SALEM — The dances of the Depression and World War II-era America made a big comeback in the late 1990s, but for four Triad couples, swing dancing is more than an intermittent fad.

Jennifer and David Coulombe, Mary and Scott Isom, Debra and Steve LeWinter, and Karen and Erik Tatsapaugh continue to add a spark to their relationships through dancing — two of the couples even met on the dance floor.

Piedmont Swing Dance Society gives them a chance to keep moving together on a regular basis. The group hosts two monthly dances in the Triad — at The Vintage Theatre in Winston on the second Saturday and the Oriental Shrine Club in Greensboro on the fourth Saturday — as well as special events. The dances draw 150 dancers on average, but they’ve attracted as many as 350 at some events.

“It’s a place where you meet people, and then some of them happen to start dating, as opposed to a place where you go to start dating people,” says Steve LeWinter, past PSDS president and a math teacher at the American Hebrew Academy in Greensboro.

His wife, Debra, teaches drama at the school, and the couple also offer swing-dance lessons there on a regular basis.

“It’s not just that it’s fun to go dancing,” she says. “It’s also a really loving, positive community. People are kind to each other, and people understand that everybody has to be a beginner. It cuts across ages and cultures.”

For these four couples, swing dancing is a fun, romantic activity, and in some cases, the initial catalyst for bringing them together. They also say it strengthens their bond.

Here’s a look at four couples who stoke the fires of romance with regular turns on the dance floor.

Karen and Erik Tatsapaugh

If not for a fateful outing to wash his clothes one day in 1998, Erik Tatsapaugh might never have met his wife, Karen.

On the wall of the laundromat, he saw a flier advertising a $5 dance lesson. Erik thought, “Wow, if I don’t like it, I’ve lost five bucks.”

The Springfield, Mass., native was looking for a chance to socialize in general and meet women in particular.

Karen had no dance background and says she “couldn’t dance,” but when she saw Erik’s swing lesson one night at Borders bookstore she thought, “You know, I think I could actually do this!”

Pretty soon Karen was making excuses to dance with one partner in particular.

“Since he had been dancing for about a month before I started, he was pretty good,” Karen says. “There ended up being a lot of people at these beginner lessons, and there wasn’t a whole lot of room on the floor. So I would go and pull him aside and say, 'Teach me this, show me how to do this.’ I did pull him aside a lot. I was attracted to his kindness and patience in teaching me and others.”

At some point Erik realized Karen was interested in more than just improving her footwork.

“Often when I danced with her, I would find her looking up at me with a big smile, and I would ask her what she was smiling about, and she would just grin and not answer,” says Erik, vice president and director of marketing for the PSDS. “I eventually caught on.”

“I liked the smiles she gave me, her easygoing manner and her kindness. When we are dancing, I’m happy.”

The couple got married in 2002 and now have a 7-year-old son. They have never stopped dancing together.

“It’s really more of a community, not just a social event,” Erik says. “Which is why I think people stick around to actually make relationships. It’s not cliquish.”

“That’s what makes it nice,” Karen adds. “Everyone dances with everyone. Everyone’s real friendly.”

Mary and Scott Isom

Winston-Salem couple Mary and Scott Isom first met in March 2008 — Scott’s first swing dance.

“A friend told me it was a good place to meet girls; we should go,” says Scott, a Nebraska native. “So I went.”

His friend was right, but it took a series of advances by Mary to get the couple together. She finally asked Scott to dance eight months after his first lesson when it became obvious he was never going to ask her.

They had their first date on Valentine’s Day three years ago. Before the big date, Scott attempted to give himself a haircut but botched it, forcing him to shave off all of his hair.

“I don’t think 'smooth’ is the word for me,” he says.

Mary wasn’t fazed. She says she “laughed and was entertained at the telling of the story” of Scott’s haircut fiasco.

They’ve been going strong ever since, even offering a mini swing-dance lesson at their wedding reception.

“It’s something we both enjoy and something we can do together,” Mary says.

“Good exercise,” Scott adds.

“Good music,” Mary says. “Most of the time, it’s live music, and even when it’s DJs, it’s fun music. We’ve gotten to know a lot of people in the swing dance community socially.”

Debra and Steve LeWinter

Debra and Steve LeWinter dabbled in dancing growing up. Steve, a Los Angeles native, performed Israeli folk dances with a troupe in high school. When he got old enough, he went dancing in clubs occasionally, but “I didn’t think of myself as a dancer,” he says.

Across the country in Philadelphia, Deb learned ballet and jazz and danced in a lot of musicals. She also did a little contra dancing but never learned to dance with a partner until she was in her 20s.

The couple met in L.A., and Deb was the first to try swing dancing.

“I loved it,” she says. “I got thrown around by some guy who probably didn’t know what he was doing. … Actually, we took our first lesson at the Derby, where 'Swingers’ was filmed in Los Angeles in Hollywood.”

Steve liked the sound of it and cooked up a little surprise while Deb was out of town for a few weeks. When she returned, she discovered that Steve had taken a couple of lessons on the sly. His sister, an accomplished dancer, taught him the moves. Steve asked Deb to go dancing “right off the plane.”

“We went to the dance, and he knows what he’s doing,” she says. “It was so romantic. So we were kind of hooked. That was 11 years ago.

“I’m a very musical person, and what I love about swing dancing is — you’re having a conversation with another person and the music. There’s this magic of your connection with that person and the music and the moment.”

In 2001, the couple moved to Greensboro when the American Hebrew Academy recruited Steve to teach math.

“We met so many friends who were so welcoming in the swing dance community that they threw us a wedding potluck only two months after meeting us,” says Deb, who has served on the PSDS board. “We had a community because of swing dance.”

Jennifer and David Coulombe

A different kind of physical activity first brought the Coulombes together, and they’ve been moving in sync ever since.

“We both went to college at Wake Forest,” David says. “We actually met in Tae Kwon Do. There’s a lot of parallels with some of the martial arts’ kicking elements and kicking elements in Lindy Hop.”

The college sweethearts got married in 1997 and turned to swing dancing as a fun, inexpensive date.

“When we were first married, we were one of those not-so-wealthy young couples that were like, 'OK, what can we find that’s cheap and involves other people like us?’” Jennifer says. “That was one of the things that we found — swing dancing.”

She is now a corporate trainer and he works for GMAC Insurance, but they have taught swing dancing on the side nearly as long as they’ve been married.

“Swing dance was the most athletic and the most casual of all the dances we had stumbled across, and that just resonated with me so well,” David says. “This was athletic, and yet it wasn’t like prim and proper and I have to be all showy. Let’s just go have fun. It’s a shout of joy, this dance, in a lot of ways. It became a great shared activity, something we looked forward to during the week.”

Even with two toddlers at home, the Coulombes still make time to dance on a regular basis.

“It’s really nice to have that thing that you share together, and that literally brings you back together physically,” Jennifer says. “I still am a big believer in the value of human touch. I think it’s really good to physically reconnect with your partner sometimes. It’s healthy and healthful.”

Contact Eddie Huffman at huffman.eddie@gmail.com