24 Years (and Counting!) of Wedded Bliss

Laurie and I celebrated our 24th wedding anniversary earlier this week – woohoo!! Since Laurie is the main reason I now have a food, wine, and spirits blog, I wanted to share a bit about our history and Laurie’s role in helping to encourage and then foster my passion for food and wine over the years!

The happy couple circa 1998

My lovely wife of 24 years is the one responsible for corrupting me and turning a good Southern Baptist boy from a teetotaler to a lover (and frequent imbiber!) of alcoholic beverages of all kinds, but especially of wine! There, I said it! But how exactly did this happen?

The story begins back in 1994 when I returned to the Center for Naval Analyses (CNA) headquarters in the DC area from my 2-year field assignment in Hawaii providing analytical support to the Commander, Marine Forces Pacific. My old boss introduced me to Laurie, who had started work at CNA while I was away on my field assignment. Actually, he tried to set us up after a failed attempt (thank goodness!) to set Laurie up with his son. I was playing it cool (and hard to get) back then, but Laurie was not impressed and let me flail in the wind until I got my act together!

Eventually, I mustered up the courage to ask her out and to my surprise and amazement, she said yes! On our first date I asked Laurie to join me for some house hunting to help me pick out the house I was planning on buying (I know, pretty slick, right??!!) and then dinner at California Pizza Kitchen afterwards. I knew things were going well when a woman sitting behind us at CPK was laughing harder than we were as she eavesdropped on our conversation!

After a few more dates, Laurie suggested that we go with some friends to a Virginia wine festival. Until then, I had never tasted alcohol, having grown up in a completely “dry” house without a drop of alcohol in it. Encouraging me to break out of my practice of personal abstinence, I took my first sip of the forbidden fruit, and was never the same again! It was a white zinfandel wine and tasted nothing like I thought it would. Instead of being astringent and nasty, it was fruity, sweet, and quaffable! I was hooked and my love and passion for wine took off from there (even as my taste in wine changed dramatically – white zinfandel is now my least favorite wine!). I began to spend more time in the kitchen learning how to cook, while always enjoying a glass of wine while doing so! Laurie and I got married in 1998 and after that we both continued our food and wine education and journey together.

Wedding day at the Carlyle House in Alexandria, VA for our wedding reception

Then, something happened that ended up "super-charging" my passion for all things food and wine-related! As many of you know, Laurie deployed with the Theodore Roosevelt Carrier Strike Group a week after 911 (all analysts at CNA are required to take a 1–3-year field assignment where they work “on-site” at Navy and Marine Corps commands as that command’s assigned CNA analyst – this was Laurie’s field assignment). The original plan was for me to meet up with her during their port visits in the Mediterranean going to and then coming back from their time on station in the North Arabian Sea. 911 changed those plans – Laurie’s strike group ended up taking the lead for Navy strike operations against Al Qaeda in Afghanistan and in the process, foregoing any and all port visits until the very end of their deployment seven months later.

While Laurie was stuck on a carrier working 16+ hour days seven days a week helping the strike group commander and his staff analyze the effectiveness of strike operations against Al Qaeda, I was spending even more time in the kitchen honing and refining my cooking skills. While Laurie was dealing with the carrier airwing staff (think about the Tom Cruise character Maverick in the movie Top Gun, and then consider what it would be like to work and deal with a few hundred testosterone-fueled Mavericks on a daily basis as the only civilian female analyst on the carrier), I was taking wine classes, reading about wine, and of course, drinking my fair share of it as well!

In a somewhat ironic twist, while I was building up our collection of wine and enjoying a glass or two every day, Laurie was experiencing “forced abstinence” on the carrier. In fact, Laurie’s deployment was known as a “six pack cruise” based on Navy rules that stated sailors and staff are entitled to a limit of two beers each after 45 continuous days at sea while on station. They were usually handed out as part of what is known as the “Steel Beach Picnic” on the Carrier flight deck. So, Laurie had six beers during her entire deployment, replacing me as the teetotaler in the family!

Laurie supporting a carrier strike group exercise in the late 90's

We made up for lost time once she returned from her deployment and haven’t looked back since! I’ll be forever grateful to my lovely bride for helping me break free from my aversion to all things alcohol-related, and introducing me to the wonderful world of food, wine, and spirits! It’s been a fun and exciting journey with her, as we became “foodies” together with frequent visits to fantastic restaurants both in our hometown of Washington DC as well as across the country during our travels. Many of our vacations have been food and wine focused, with trips to explore wineries and great restaurants in Virginia wine country, as well as Napa Valley, Sonoma, and Carmel Valley in California. In the future, we plan to revisit many of these domestic wine destinations, as well as travel overseas to visit some of our food and wine bucket list destinations together (like France and Italy to name a few).

Laurie is also the one who really encouraged me to start a food, wine, and spirits blog and she has been my biggest cheerleader in this new endeavor! She also helps me every week by using her skills as a photographer to provide many of the photos for my blog, creating and testing new recipes, and coming up with ideas for new blog posts. I simply couldn’t do it without her!

So, as you can see, I owe Laurie for introducing me to the wonderful world of wine and encouraging me to develop and then pursue my passion for food, wine and spirits. I can’t imagine a better partner for this journey. We always kiddingly tell each other “You’re stuck with me!” but in reality, I can’t imagine life without this wonderful lady! So Happy Anniversary to my beautiful bride and cheers to the next 24 years (and more!) together!

Cocktails with Laurie at KOJO, our favorite restaurant in Sarasota