The ambassador and the artist: How real life Austin 'Argo' couple cultivated life abroad

No matter what else happens in Joe and Kathleen Stafford's richly embroidered lives, it will be difficult to obscure the fact that the ambassador and the artist, both working at the American Embassy in Tehran in 1979, were whisked out of the country during the Iran Hostage Crisis, a thriller reenacted in the Oscar-winning 2012 movie "Argo."

In Ben Affleck's movie, a C.I.A. operative rescues U.S. diplomats by pretending to be making a science-fiction film. Actor Scoot McNairy, a University of Texas graduate, plays diplomat Joe Stafford, and Kerry Bishé appears as "Kathy" Stafford.

In the film, some of their tense scenes were given the Hollywood treatment.

"We did not go out to the market," Joe says. "That would have been a nutty thing to do. There was no chase scene. We did not have an extreme conversation with security at the airport. There was no Revolutionary Guard there first thing in the morning. It was pretty tense but uneventful."

"Also, we didn't go to the Canadians right away," Kathleen says. "We did eventually hide with Canadian Ambassador Ken Taylor. He doesn't receive enough credit."

She adds: "The movie is now the history more than anything else."

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Along with this Iranian high adventure, the Staffords were posted at embassies or consulates in Mauritania, Nigeria, Iraq, Ivory Coast, Gambia, Sudan, Tunisia, Algeria, Kuwait, Egypt and Italy.

In many circumstances, Joe served as ambassador or deputy ambassador. During dangerous times, Kathleen was "exfiltrated" out of Iran and evacuated out of Sudan and Ivory Coast.

Now living in a modest house with a deep back yard and frontage on a small creek in Southwest Austin, surrounded by reminders of their years abroad, the Staffords are back in the public spotlight. That's because, for the past few months, Kathleen's art has been on display at Chez Zee, the venerable Northwest Austin café.

"The watercolors Kathleen paints capture the essence of the person or the setting," says Sharon Watkins, owner of Chez Zee. "The mothers with children on their backs, the woman washing her clothes, the tribal chiefs posing in confidence and splendor. Kathleen collects the setting and the people and pours them on the paper from their life to ours."

Since the watercolors, prints and collagraphs, often portraits that double as studies of local apparel, have been on exhibit, thousands of Chez Zee guests have gazed on them.

"I've never had a show that so inhabits this space," Watkins says. "I often stand in the center of the dining room and look right and left to say hello to the people who have joined us in our place. Restaurants can be tricky for art shows. The size. The subject matter has to work in the dining rooms. And they need to represent the artist well. We've sold half this show, which is the most we've ever sold."

"I'm happy to have the art out like this," Kathleen says. "In the past, my watercolors, for instance, might be shown in a church basement for an hour once a week. The guests were usually spouses and friends.

"Now this art is out where everyone can see it and know the places where we lived."

A lifelong fascination with colors, textiles and ideas

Kathleen Stafford was born May 21, 1951, in Springfield, Massachusetts. Because her father served as a navigator in the Air Force, she grew up in several states from Hawaii to Tennessee.

When asked what kind of child she was, Kathleen answers in a playful manner used by wife and husband over multiple chats.

Kathleen (with a big smile): "I was very nice."

Joe: "Still is."

Smitten with learning, Kathleen accompanied her older sister to school and played with her younger brother's toys, which promoted more learning than some toys meant for girls. "That's why I'm good at math," she says.

"There were always a lot of kids in the neighborhood," she says of life on or near military bases. "I grew up thinking everybody kept moving."

Kathleen showed an early interest in the arts. Colors, textures, ideas fascinated her.

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She performed in community theater, and she served as class president and as editor of the school art magazine. She spent her last year of college at University of Alabama in Birmingham — one of the first two graduates in art — in order to gain access to a fine-art printing press. She studied art in Rome and completed her formal training proficient in drawing, painting and printing.

Later, Kathleen used her background in art to meld her personal style to local subjects, while collaborating and exhibiting with local artists on the ground.

"What more can you ask for if you are an artist?" Kathleen says. "The different sounds, music, voices in every country.

"Now, we knew we were a privileged minority. You learn that you can manage. You find out who you need to know to get through. And you see how the people struggle just to get through the day."

'Be in Washington, D.C., in 10 days'

Joe Stafford was born March 19, 1950, in Tulsa, Oklahoma. His father worked as a chemical engineer, his mother as a homemaker. The family moved to Texas, Louisiana and Tennessee.

"I was bookish, focused on studying," Joe says. "I did play Little League baseball."

At the University of Tennessee-Knoxville, where he met Kathleen, Joe majored in Spanish and minored in political science.

"I was hoping to do something overseas," he says.

Joe picked up languages — Spanish, Italian, French, Arabic, Farsi and a little Turkish — with seeming ease.

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He earned a master's degree in political science, took a job in Rome with an import-export company, then worked on a doctorate from the University of Florida. He also took the tests for foreign service officers.

He received a note from the State Department: "Be in Washington, D.C., in 10 days."

In 1979, Joe and Kathleen headed to Iran. They experienced six months of orientation to the culture in Washington. Luckily, Farsi, the primary language of Iran, is somewhat similar to Arabic.

"After about two months there, things got hot," Kathleen says. "We had been traveling around, taking day trips to the Caspian Sea and the mountains."

During the Islamic Revolution, the Iranians were furious about American support for Shah Reza Pahlavi, who had modernized the country, often brutally. Students seized the American Embassy on Nov. 4, 1979. The Iranians held more than 50 Americans hostage, some for as long as 444 days.

The Staffords thought things would calm down.

"I called my mother," Kathleen told the American-Statesman in 2014. "I said, 'We're OK and don't worry about anything. I'll call you in a few days.' Of course I didn't call back for three months."

"I think the feeling was, at some point this is all going to end and we, our group of six, would be reunited with our colleagues who had been taken hostage," Joe told the American-Statesman in 2014, "and we will all depart Tehran together."

Kathleen joked about the ever-present possibility they'd wind up as hostages, too. "That's exactly what I planned, and that's the clothes I packed," she said in 2014. "I packed clothes that I could sit in and be tied in a chair and be comfortable."

Joe, who earned various diplomatic honors and is a member of the American Academy of Diplomacy, consulted on international affairs in retirement, and now watches the news from countries he knew well.

After his experience in Niamey, Niger, was Joe surprised by the recent coup in that country?

"I didn't anticipate it at all," Joe says. "I spent four years working with the military and the police, trying to instill respect for civilian authority — good governance — and instead of respect for the civilian government, they moved to overthrow it.

"We wanted to halt the cycles of coups that plagued Niger in the past," he continues. "It's troubling to see the latest events. It's not clear why they moved against the elected president. We'll have to see what happens."

'It was always challenging and interesting'

Joe and Kathleen had met during an art history class at the University of Tennessee in Knoxville.

"I asked her out," Joe remembers. "I said: 'I see you did well on the test.'"

"Our date was the library," Kathleen says. "The librarian threw us out because we were laughing."

The couple married in June 1972. They had a son, David, who grew up around the world.

"It was always stimulating," Joe says. "You learn the countries, their cultures, their histories. It was always challenging and interesting."

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"I sought out the local cultures," Kathleen says. "My work was always informed by the art that I found. I collaborated with other artists and shared the chance to exhibit, first in Italy, then in Algeria and elsewhere."

Taking a workshop class at a university in Nigeria, she was impressed by the students' discipline.

"They would arrive at 9 in the morning," Kathleen recalls. "Then they moved outside when the electricity went out, and would keep up their work until 9 or 10 at night."

Among the elements that make Kathleen's work so much more than flat images are the carefully constructed and decorated frames. Living in Nigeria between 2010 and 2012, she got to know a woodcarver, Joseph Olatunji, who had excelled at detailed bead-work.

"He can do anything," Kathleen says. "Once when we were in Niger, he wrote to say 'I'm broke. I've made 15 frames. Can you send me some money?' Next it came down to shipping things without knowing the language or the African networks. We had to go through several languages to get them delivered to Niger."

Restaurant owner Watkins thinks that the portraits of women are particularly compelling.

"I loved that in most cases these were women she knew or places she had stood," Watkins says. "They look you in the eye and present themselves. I love that. I think a lot of this is subliminal. I didn't think about why. I just liked it. And it was so much fun to hang. Creating stories on the wall by creating the groupings."

How did these residents of the world end up in Austin?

"We heard from foreign service friends and others that the San Antonio-Austin corridor is a good place to settle down," Joe told the American-Statesman in 2014, "and we decided on Austin, with full respect for the wonderful place that San Antonio is."

Kathleen sustains her career in a studio crowded with art supplies and singular works of art. Meanwhile, Joe is studying Chinese.

Kathleen: "He's very good at it."

Joe: "Oh come on, I wouldn't say that."

Kathleen: "He's held entire conversations in Chinese."

The couple have built a new life in Austin without close geographical or personal ties to their past nearby.

Joe: "In the military, you may retire near a base."

Kathleen: "When you retire from the foreign service, you just go someplace else."

This article originally appeared on Austin American-Statesman: Austin couple portrayed in movie 'Argo' are more interesting