Oh my- I completely forgot that I met Jimmy Carter. And Holyfield’s many kids went to school with my kids.
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See, I wasn’t joking when I said everyone in Atlanta knows one of Evander Holyfield’s kids. 11 children with 6 different mothers. All the names begin with an E. Two of them are named Elijah and there’s another named Eli. I’m guessing he just started running out of boy names after a while. 
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I just remembered - the band Train.
I was staying at the W Hotel in San Francisco and as part of the conference I attended Train did a concert. It was fabulous and I could have been right up against the stage if I wanted to be. We decided maybe 20 feet back was better. We rode the elevator up with the group at the end of the night. (The concert wasn’t at the hotel - it was somewhere outside with a backdrop of the Bay Bridge, which made it all the better).
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H met Muhammad Ali at the pool at a hotel when he was a kid. He happily gave H an autograph, which is proudly displayed in a frame in our house. H said Ali was awesome.
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After reading this thread, I realized how many famous people I’ve seen or met. I’m a nobody and I’ve never lived in NYC, LA or DC, but I seem to come across lots of famous people including politicians, athletes, and people in the performing arts.
Here’s one story: I met Bob Dole on an elevator a couple of years after his presidential run. My husband, my husband’s colleague and wife and I were the only other passengers. He introduced himself and shook everyone’s hands. After Dole got off the elevator, the other wife and I just dropped our jaws in awe and and said “OMG!!”. The two husbands, who both worked 80+ hours a week and never had time for current events, asked us who Bob Dole was.
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I have never met anyone famous in my life. I guess I live a very sheltered existence
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Or you see people as people.
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I belong to an activist political organization, and I’ve met our Congressman and our Governor. I’ve also been in a relatively small audience – eg, fewer than 800 – where Kamala Harris spoke, and another one with Joe Biden and one of our Senators. Also Jesse Jackson showed up at the meeting that Harris addressed.
Back in my corporate days, my company belonged to an organization called Association for a Better New York, and I was 10 feet away from President Clinton and, at another meeting, Hilary.
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Or maybe some of us read People magazine and are better at recognizing famous people. 
I would never approach a celebrity and pester them for a photo or autograph.
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There is also a difference between a chance meet or chance glance at someone famous in someplace like a restaurant vs. an opportunity to see/meet someone - like when you buy tickets to an event.
It’s the unexpected spotting that prompted this thread.
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Ok. I remember one more which is actually the one have I had the longest interaction with. Al Molinara. Who was Al on happy days. He was also the spokesman for On Cor frozen dinners and he was making an appearance in downstate Illinois and was flying to Chicago where he had family. It was a small plane. Me my co worker ( we were interviewing people at the U of I). Al. His agent. And Miss America and her agent. Who had also been downstate. I was sitting next to Al. He started by making polite conversation but when I said I was an attorney he got animated. His son was thinking about going to law school. What did I as a young attorney think ? We talked the whole short flight. We got off the plane and were walking through O hare. And I started thinking “ why are all these people staring at us? “ I just was viewing him at that point as someone’s dad. And then I was like Oh yeah, he’s famous!
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I remember when Bob Dole became the Republican nominee. I was in college, and a news segment about the nomination was playing on the TV in the dining hall. My friend turned to me and asked, “Dole who? The juice guy?” 
Honestly, I wasn’t sure either, so I replied, “Hmm, maybe? I don’t know… they’re saying he’s a senator.”
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And one step removed, 2 friends of mine attend the Memorial day parade in Chappaqua (where one lives) every year. They usually see, as they did this year….
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And how could I forget the several days we spent with (including a private bus tour, drinks and dinner) with Jimmy Webb and his wife, Laura Savini. Sad that as a producer and host for PBS, she will be looking for something else to do when it winds down.
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Oh, just thought of a second celeb encounter.
Before moving to CA, Ricky Schroeder and family lived where I grew up and had my first nursing job. School-aged Ricky was admitted to our unit for asthma. He told us he was moving and was cast in a movie with Jon Voight - it was The Champ.
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If we are morphing outside of restaurants, here goes - was watching my youngest start his ice skating lessons because he wanted to play ice hockey like his older brother but all he wanted to do was push the traffic cones around the ice. I looked to the dad to the right of me to say something about it and saw it was Atlanta Braves pitcher Tom Glavin - I stopped immediately and turned to my left to say “guess who’s standing next to us?” and it was Braves pitcher Greg Maddox!
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We live relatively close to the Ice Rink where the Washington Capitals practice, which means a number of them live very close. When they were in fourth or fifth grade one of my son’s friends - a huge hockey fan - asked his parents to take him to as many players houses for Halloween as possible, and he took a minivan full of his buddies. So my S22, not me, has “met” I think 8-10 former Caps players. (The majority of whom gave out full size candy bars for halloween.)
The kid’s birthday was right around then, so the parents basically morphed this into his birthday party too. It was a school night, and I’m sure all the boys were just dead at school the next day, but for years my S22 talked about this as The Best Night. I gather the parents were cranking music in the van, there was pizza before the outing, they added extra stops at particularly well decorated or well known houses in the area, and they had some family friends dress up to “scare” the kids. The Caps players were a highlight, but it was all told an awesome experience.
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Getting back to grocery store celeb sightings, I’m going to relate an old family story about Marilyn Monroe with the hopes that maybe some of the Yalies or Ct people on here know more about this. My mom grew up in Hamden,Ct just outside of New Haven. My mom and grandma always told me that Marilyn Monroe and Arthur Miller rented a house around the corner from them when he was doing a residency at Yale in the 1950s. Mom and grandma would always point out the house when we drove by. Grandma claimed she saw Marilyn Monroe in the supermarket several times and that her best friend saw them frequently at synagogue . I googled this at one point and I can’t find any information about Miller ever being a scholar in residence at Yale, but Marilyn Monroe did convert to Judaism with Rabbi Goldburg at the local synagogue where Arthur Miller was a member - so at least that part of the story is true.
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