When you find yourself trying to remember a show (or any works) that's on the tip of your tongue but just out of reach, come here - the collective brain of the TVTropes community can probably help. Post all the details you can remember (examples help). If you're looking for a trope, head over to Trope Finder. Have general questions about tropes? Visit Ask The Tropers!
Don't know for sure, but could it be GED Connection
, though it was filmed in Kentucky, not Missouri or Iowa.
It's not GED Connection because that looks like it (a.) takes place in a classroom and (b.) was recorded in the 1990s. This program must've been recorded ca. 1985 or thereabouts and contained no classroom footage whatsoever. It appeared to only have two settings: One in the man's apartment, where he taught the woman (who might've been from Austria or Germany instead of Eastern Europe) proper grammar, sentence structure, etc., and the other in the woman's workplace, which looked like a back room at some department store in the mall. (They even showed a still of the front of the department store before transitioning to the workplace scenes, which looked like an image of Macy's with the Macy's logo edited out and the fake department store's logo edited in.) And I only said Missouri or Iowa because it looked classically midwestern and I knew the program wasn't from the Dade County-Miami Educational TV people (who were a major contributor to adult educational TV in the '80s), though KET (i.e. the Kentucky Educational TV people) were the other major contributor, so it might have possibly come from them. Or it could've come from the St. Louis PBS station, or somewhere in Indiana or elsewhere in the middle of the country.
@rushlight: Have you asked your mom yet? I'm really hoping she'll remember. Oh, here's an extra detail that I THINK might be correct and might be helpful: I believe the name of the fake department store the woman worked at was called "Lacey's" or "Lacy's". Which would make sense if they had to make over that old Macy's storefront stills to make it look like a different store, with the low budget they clearly had. Oh, and I also remember the woman wearing a lot of ankle-length, free-flowing skirts and the man wearing a lot of cardigans.
I googled "lacy's department store", and (once I'd assured it I didn't mean Macy's) this was the first result
.
Not the OP, but Write Right is the one I was remembering. It was produced by Mississippi Public Television, but the rest of the shows in the series were by Kentucky Public Television.
" Write Right: Spelling
Sonya, a European immigrant, works as a Customer Services representative at Lacy's Department Store. She is having considerable trouble understanding the complexities of the English language. Arthur, working on an English textbook, shows her the "see-say-write" method for correct spelling. "
Edited by Madrugada@Paul A: I tried your link but nothing would load, unfortunately, but (parsing from its URL) it might make sense that it would be a part of a multi-part series called "GED on TV" — I do recall it being a telecourse for adults seeking to earn their GE Ds. So you might've been onto something there.
@Madrugada: THAT'S IT!! I recognized the name "Sonya" immediately. Yup, this is definitely the program I remember. Oh man, I remember totally shipping Sonya and Arthur and really hoping for an episode where they'd start dating. Thank you so much for giving me part of my childhood back. Wondering now where the series was shot; it had such a midwestern feel to it that I wouldn't be surprised if they filmed it in northern Kentucky, close to the Ohio border.

I've been wondering about this for over ten years and am hoping someone here can help. This was an adult educational program, presumably for G.E.D. preparation, that aired on PBS in the late 1980s. It featured a male writer who lived in one apartment and a recent Eastern European immigrant (who was a woman) who lived in the apartment next door. The woman worked as the secretary to a black woman who managed a department store and relied on her next-door neighbor to help her learn proper English grammar, punctuation, and sentence structure, so she could do well at her job. The secretary was friends with her superior and the male janitor at the department store, and there was quite a bit of chemistry between her (the Eastern European woman, whom I remember as having long, flowing, wavy red hair) and her male next-door neighbor (whom I remember as having short, dark brown hair). I remember this as being the first time I ever 'shipped something. What I can't remember is the name of this program! I want to say it was produced by a midwestern U.S. PBS station because it felt like it was set somewhere in Iowa or Missouri. Anyone else remember this program and can help me out on I Ding it?