Tammy Wyatt and Actor-Turned-CIA Agent Zachary Wyatt Perform A.R. Gurney’s Play at Carnegie Stage
By SHARON EBERSON
Tammy and Zachary Wyatt’s love story began in 2006, as a handwritten correspondence.
He wrote a letter to her, after seeing a show she directed that honored the founders of the theater program at their shared alma mater, Montour High School.
The former actor and retired CIA agent had come from Washington, D.C., for the occasion, and, “I was overwhelmed by how good it was. Tammy made some comments onstage, and I asked one of the teachers subsequently, ‘Do you have her address? I’d love to write her a note of appreciation.’ ”
That was the first letter. And then she snail-mailed one back. Before they met in person, they did not pick up a phone or send email for two months.
“It’s not just the idea that you’re sending a letter to someone, but you’re receiving a reply, and that’s what’s magical,” said Zachary Wyatt. “And so that was in part our attraction to do Love Letters.”
perform Love Letters at Carnegie Stage. (Image courtesy of Ken Gargaro)
Opening this Valentine’s Day weekend, the couple will be onstage, together, for the first time, reading Love Letters, an enduring play told entirely through correspondence. It is not a love story in the way we think of such things. It’s about two people whose relationship unfolds over a lifetime, shaped by timing and choices that determine paths taken, and not taken.
The A.R. Gurney play, opening at Carnegie Stage on February 13, 2026, is produced by Ken Gargaro.
Tammy Wyatt’s path included time as a “Gargaro kid,” who continued to perform while also becoming a flight attendant.
To help bring Love Letters to the stage, the Wyatts turned to an old friend.
“Tammy has been a key actress for me since she played piano for me when I did Charlie Brown. When she was in ninth grade, she was so talented. She was able to play the accompaniment,” recalled Gargaro, the founder of Pittsburgh Musical Theater and its conservatory, which began as Gargaro Productions.
When he was approached to help the Wyatts mount Love Letters – not the big musical production we’ve come to expect from Gargaro – his first thought was of giving back to a former student, but also, “I thought, OK, I so seldom do this sort of thing. It’s sort of fun now instead of work.”
He notes that Tammy Wyatt is known for playing Connie Francis in the musical Beehive, “she will be her usual hilarious self; she’s always great,” Gargaro said.
The only stage Zachary Wyatt has been on for decades is as a public speaker, on behalf of the CIA. However, when he left the Pittsburgh area, it was to study drama at Southern Methodist University, near Dallas, Texas. He believed acting would be his forever path.
After graduation, he came home to audition for the 1981-82 Pittsburgh Public Theater production of Juno and the Paycock, and won the part.
Even before his acting debut, his attention was drawn to world events of the time, a road that eventually took him in a new direction: a graduate degree at George Washington University and a 30+-year career with the CIA.
These days, his role is traveling the country to talk to new generations about the role of agents, and how their job is far from what is often portrayed in pop culture.
While acting is all about being seen and heard, there are other perks of a theatrical foundation that helped Wyatt in his role with the CIA.
“A skill I brought from my acting days was listening,” he said, “because the collection of human intelligence around the world is listening to other people, being curious about what makes them tick, curious about what makes them do the things they do. And boy, you’ve got to give people the attention they deserve in those kinds of conversations. And I think that’s the skill that I’m able to do.”
In Love Letters, he will be exercising a skill that he learned long ago, acting alongside his wife, in a performance that was meant to be.
Their love story, after all, started with letters.
TICKETS AND DETAILS
Love Letters is at Carnegie Stage, 25 W. Main Street, Carnegie, February 12-14, 19-21, 2026 at 7:30 p.m. and February 15 at 2 p.m. https://www.eventbrite.com/e/love-letters-a-play-by-ar-gurney-tickets-1979939943670
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