They slip out of the hotel and head straight to the nearest Dairy Queen.
“I love it,” actress Longoria said Friday, beaming after ordering her Peanut Buster Parfait.
Naturally, Buffet does, too. He’s the son of billionaire investor Warren Buffett, who heads the holding company known as Berkshire Hathaway Inc. Dairy Queen is a Berkshire company.
Howard Buffett sits on the Berkshire Hathaway board, among numerous other corporate boards.
The Dairy Queen isn’t far away — it’s in the Rivercenter mall.
Minutes earlier, the two had been standing in front of an audience in a ballroom.
“I’m very good at spending Howard’s money,” Longoria said during the 20th anniversary luncheon of micro- and small business-lender Liftfund, held at the Marriott Rivercenter Hotel.
The program actually began in 2013 and Accion has lent about half the money. The other half is expected to go out in loans this year.
Longoria and Buffett joined to help disadvantaged Latinas in Texas after several years of friendship. Longoria heads the Eva Longoria Foundation, which received the $1 million donation from Buffett’s Howard G. Buffett Foundation.
His foundation fights hunger with grants to improve farming techniques and water conservation around the world.
The two friends decided to fund and operate the program while operating a combine together and harvesting corn at one of Buffett’s farms in Illinois. “It was a fun brainstorm,” Longoria said.
After that, it was a matter of finding a lender for the program. They selected San Antonio-based Accion.
“She convinced me to do it in Texas,” Buffett told the audience, adding that it had been a challenge for him. “I’m a Nebraska Cornhusker. You guys spoil our season all the time,” he said, referring to seasons when Nebraska and Texas college teams were in the Big 12 Conference. Nebraska now is in the Big Ten.
To date, the Latina Loan Fund has made 58 loans that have created or sustained 150 jobs in economically distressed areas of Texas.
Buffett said in an interview — between the Accion event and Dairy Queen — the future of the fund will depend on the results.
“We want to see more risk-taking” by the lender in situations “were there is no other opportunity,” Buffett said.
“It’s been working amazing,” Longoria added.
The two philanthropists collaborate on smaller projects, too, including one in San Antonio and Corpus Christi that delivers food to needy families, a program operated by food banks.
The pair had met a couple of years earlier through a friend who knew of their common interests in immigration issues. Buffett, who also owns farms in Arizona, and Longoria started their friendship by taking helicopter tours along the Arizona-Mexico border and talking to farmers and migrant workers, they said.
The former “Desperate Housewives” actress, who also operates her Eva’s Heroes program helping special-needs children, said her philanthropic urge comes from her Corpus Christi childhood.
“My older sister was special needs, and we were always using community services, the Boys & Girls Club, the Salvation Army,” Longoria said. “We had to volunteer a lot. I didn’t know what volunteer meant. I thought it was a job.”
Growing up in Omaha, Neb., in the Buffett household may have been different, but Buffett described it as normal. His wealthy father gave his children allowances, but Warren Buffett also had a coin slot machine in the house. The children would feed their allowance into the machine, and Warren “always got part of our allowance back.
“I never knew we were wealthy. I had friends who I thought were rich,” he recalled.
Howard Buffett said he didn’t make out a March Madness basketball bracket even though his father offered a $1 billion prize to anyone who predicted all the tournament winners in a challenge offered by Quicken Loans.
No one will win the prize this year after everyone was eliminated after the first tournament’s first two days.
“I don’t follow that stuff,” Buffett said.
“He’s been in the Congo” for his foundation, Longoria interjected.
“I learned a long time ago,” Buffett added, “that it’s not smart to bet against him” — his father.
Longoria said she’s busy in Hollywood with producing and directing some episodes of the second season of “Devious Maids,” a Lifetime channel series. She’s also going to appear in a “scary” movie that will premiere in theaters soon, titled “Visions.”
“I haven’t found a project yet to take me back in front of the TV cameras,” she said.
With that, it was time to find the Dairy Queen before catching their afternoon flights out of San Antonio.
“We just have fun hanging out together,” Buffett said.
