Michele Singer Reiner Inspired Rob Reiner to Change the Ending of ‘When Harry Met Sally’

Mr. Reiner’s falling for his wife of 36 years inspired the director to rework the ending of “When Harry Met Sally …” The couple would collaborate on movies and political causes.

Before Rob Reiner met Michele Singer in 1988, when he was directing what would become Hollywood’s most celebrated romantic comedy, “When Harry Met Sally …”, he was feeling hopeless in the love department.

“I was sitting in L.A. with Barry Sonnenfeld, the cinematographer on the film,” Mr. Reiner told The New York Times in 1989. “I was bemoaning my lack-of-woman fate. And he says to me, ‘I know this girl. Her name is Michele Singer, and you’re going to marry her.’ And I said, ‘What, are you nuts?’”

(Mr. Reiner had, in fact, been interested in pursuing the actress Michelle Pfeiffer, but Mr. Sonnenfeld was insistent: “The Michele you’re going to marry is Michele Singer,” he told him.)

Mr. Reiner spotted Ms. Singer, a photographer, from a distance while she visited the New York set of the film. He was shooting a scene in which Meg Ryan and Billy Crystal’s lovesick characters argue with each other.

“I look over, and I see this girl, and whoo! I was attracted immediately,” he told The Times. The meeting would change movie history.

“Originally, Harry and Sally didn’t get together,” he told The Guardian in 2018. “But then I met Michele and I thought: OK, I see how this works.”

Mr. Reiner reworked the movie’s ending — Harry and Sally had to marry each other.

Just as Mr. Reiner and Ms. Singer did just a few months after meeting. When the couple was found dead at their home in Los Angeles on Sunday, they had been married for more than 35 years. Mr. Reiner was 78, and Ms. Singer Reiner was 70.

“They were a joyous couple,” Mr. Sonnenfeld said in an interview with The New York Times on Monday. “Michele was so important to Rob’s life and, believe me, Rob would have been a basket case without her.”

Ms. Singer had a direct and witty personality, Mr. Sonnenfeld said. After that first meeting on the “When Harry Met Sally …” set, Mr. Sonnenfeld recalled, Mr. Reiner turned to him and said, “She’s quite arch, isn’t she?” Mr. Reiner quickly asked for her number.

Ms. Singer Reiner could be a quiet presence in the news media, but Mr. Reiner often spoke of their instant connection.

“I’d been married for 10 years, I was single for 10 years, and I couldn’t figure out how I was ever going to be with anyone,’” Mr. Reiner told Chris Wallace of CNN last year, referring to his first marriage to the director Penny Marshall.

After Ms. Singer Reiner’s marriage to Mr. Reiner, she worked on some of her husband’s movies. She was a special photographer on “Misery,” his 1990 horror film, according to IMDb, the movie database. She was also a producer on this year’s “Spinal Tap II: The End Continues,” the second iteration of his heavy metal comedy.

Ms. Singer Reiner became known for working on political projects with her husband. In the 1990s, for instance, the couple started a national campaign to raise awareness about the importance of early child development and improve parental access to support services. They also helped form the American Foundation for Equal Rights in 2009, a nonprofit group that was crucial in overturning the ban on same-sex marriage in California.

In a conversation with Stephen Colbert in 2016, at the Montclair Film Festival, in New Jersey, Mr. Reiner credited his wife for his sustained political activism.

“I can honestly say the reason I’ve done as many things in the political sphere is largely because of her,” Mr. Reiner said. “She is my Bunsen burner that lights the flame in my ass.”

Ms. Singer Reiner’s passion for social justice largely arose from the fact that her mother was a Holocaust survivor. In recent years, the Reiner family laid brass blocks in front of her mother’s former home as part of a commemorative art program known as the Stolpersteine project.

The Reiners were fierce critics of President Trump and his policies. As a photographer, Ms. Singer Reiner had taken a portrait of Mr. Trump for the cover of “The Art of the Deal,” his best-selling book from 1987.

“She has a lot to atone for,” Mr. Reiner joked to The Guardian.

The couple had three children: Jake, Nick and Romy. The police arrested their son Nick Reiner, 32, on Sunday night on suspicion of murder in their deaths. He is being held in Los Angeles County without bail.

Mr. Sonnenfeld said Ms. Singer Reiner had worried about Nick for decades. “He was very troubled,” he said.

When the couple celebrated their 25th wedding anniversary, in 2014, Mr. Reiner thanked his wife for what she had brought to his world.

“As you go along, the relationship becomes better and better because you really become best friends,” he recalled to the AARP. “And that has happened. She has helped raise me. The thing I talk about, how women show you what’s important, she has done for me.”

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