A few years back my father and I went on a ski trip in Colorado for a week. Over the first few days of the trip, we had developed a habit of hanging out in a comfortable little lounge area in the hotel after skiing. There was a widescreen TV, and on the fourth day of the trip, we watched the Patriots play in the playoffs.
On that fourth day, we headed down to the lounge and parked ourselves near the TV and the fire. The game had already started, and we had missed roughly half of the first quarter; a result of our insistance to get our money's worth from the resort. The only other people seated there was a couple, she in her 40s and he in his 50s.
As it often goes with me and my father, we start talking to them, asking them where they're from, and so on. Their answers are nothing particularly special, and we just assume they're any old couple here for a getaway ski week, though at some point my father must have figured it out. Eventually, she asks us about a call in the football game, sparking a long conversation about the way the game is played (she was not particularly learned on the subject of football, and neither was he).
Around the end of the third quarter, she gets up to get a drink. My father turns to him and asks (to my surprise, as I hadn't thought anything of her) "Your wife looks very familiar. Would I know her for some reason?" He says, as calmly as can be, "Yeah, she's Shania Twain." We had been talking to her and her then-husband Robert "Mutt" Lange, the producer, and teaching them about football. For the majority of the conversation, I had no idea who they were, and it took a long time for my father to catch on.
It's an interesting story, one I tell every now and then. The biggest thing I took away from it is that most celebrities really don't want to be celebrities, and are perfectly content with talking to an oblivious father and his oblivious son about something like American football.