David & Esther's Love Story

Have I got a great story for you?  I met my wife back in the mid 70’s, my parents divorced for a number of years and I would spend weekends with my dad.  Well, he was dating a very nice woman named Judy.  She had 2 daughters, Ester & Judy.  I became friends with them and soon after Ester and I started to date.  We dated for the next few months, but at the age of 14 & 15 and the fact that I was living in Elizabeth we had to take a train to see each other.  It was a tough thing to do.  In addition there was me dating my father’s girlfriend’s daughter and trying to explain that to my mom, well it was a Romeo & Juliet kind of thing.  So it did not last as long as I would have liked. 

As we got older, we lost touch.  I moved to Florida and lived there for about 10 years.  Ester also moved out of state for a time.  We both had relationships that just did not work out.  After a while we both were back in Bayonne and not happy with our lives or the direction that we were going.  Then one day, a Wednesday, my father gave me a call at work and asked me if I would like to go to dinner with him.  He also tells me that he was going to see Judy there and that his friend Ray was supposed to be there but at last minute had to cancel.  Then the surprise, he says that Ester was also going to be there.  Now I haven’t seen Ester in more than 20 years!  Of course I wanted to see her.  So on the following day, July 29, 1999 I left work, in Hoboken at the time and went to my father’s to clean up and change.  Off to the Meditterraneo restaurant we go.  When we arrived I walked in first through the door, the second door has glass panels and I saw these two women sitting at the bar, one i knew right away as Judy as I had bumped into her from time to time always asking how her daughters were doing.  Then I see the woman next to her, long blonde hair, beautiful smile, WOW what a knock out.  So there I am in between the two doors my mouth agape and asking my father if that was Ester.  He pushed me aside and in a matter of fact way says yes.  I stumble in and make my way over.  Now Ester sees this whole thing and later tells me how funny I looked.  In a nice way.  You see we had not seen each other in a long time and we did not look like we did in our teen years.  Although we were both quite happy with what we were seeing.  Hellos were made and my father sat next to Judy, I still could not take my eyes off Ester and was just standing there, when Ester pulled a chair over next to her and said for me to sit here next to her.  We were there for dinner but never made it, we started to talk and this went on for hours.  Not even including our parents.  At the end of the nite neither one of us wanted it to end.  Her mom had to drag her out that night.  We exchanged phone numbers and a couple of days later we were together again and we have been stuck at the hip since.  The one thing that my father said that nite that I’ll never forget, he was talking to Judy and said “can you stop this cause I can’t”.  In July 2002 we married.  We can’t believe that it took so long to find each other again.  You have probably seen us walking down Broadway holding hands, smiling, laughing and just not getting enough of each other.  I’ve never been so happy.  Pepe at Meditteraneo loves to see us, he was there the night that we got back together.  We both moved around, looked around and didn’t find what was in out own backyard.  I love my wife so very much.  I think this rates as a great love story and I hope you print this.  There are a lot of people in town that know us and would love to see this in print.  Oh by the way I proposed to my wife in front of Kodak jewelers.  I had asked Barry the owner to use his front window and had a sign on a rotating carousel asking Ester to marry me.  I brought Ester by under pretense of looking at some new jewelry.  She looked in the window an after a couple of turns she says is that for me???  After the shock Barry brought us in took some pictures and even had so champagne for us.  What a great life.