Love is in the air, so they say every time Valentine’s Day rolls around, but isn’t love always in the air? At least, we find that to be the case after delving into these three Memphis couples’ love stories. With class president battles, spilled spaghetti, and flutes and pianos, these stories are, dare we say, better than any rom-com.
Deni + Patrick
Patrick and Deni Reilly are at work together every day. Patrick is the chef and they’re both owners of three restaurants: The Majestic Grille, Cocozza American Italian, and the upcoming Cocozza American Italian location in East Memphis.
They remember when they met. Patrick, who is from Dublin, was general manager at the Gibson Lounge at the old Gibson Guitar Factory. Deni, who is from New Jersey, worked with DoubleTree hotels. Sean Costello introduced them at his concert in 2001 at the Gibson Lounge.
“I was pretty smitten,” Deni says. “I thought he was pretty cute.”
“I said we should go out to lunch sometime,” Patrick says. “And she leaned over and kissed me. And I said, ‘Or maybe dinner.’”
“I gave him my number,” Deni says.
They began dating. Deni remembers when her parents visited Memphis and met Patrick for the first time. Her mother told Deni’s sister, “She’s in love.”
“I was headed in that direction,” Deni says.
“It’s one of those things,” Patrick says. “We were friends for a while. Then we dated for awhile. We broke up for awhile. I was divorced and I was really gun-shy about another relationship, so it took a minute. I don’t know when I knew, but I knew when I made that commitment. And that was a couple of years later.”
Popping the question backfired at first, Patrick recalls. “I had a plan. I was going to propose at McEwen’s.”
He was all set to propose. “I had the ring, which my friend Suzanne Hamm helped me pick out, and I had it all arranged in my head.”
They went to dinner. “But for some reason they kind of rushed us out. They dropped the check on us really fast.”
So, Patrick didn’t have time to propose.
And, Deni says, “I also spilled spaghetti sauce all over my shirt.”
Patrick then came up with Plan B. The Christmas tree was still up at the Peabody Hotel, so he suggested they have a drink in the lobby. He thought that would be “a fun romantic spot” to ask for Deni’s hand.
But, he says, “There was a fire alarm or something and 200 people in their pajamas with blankets in the lobby. It was so strange. We ended up going home.”
“He lit the fire and some candles, took the ring out of his pocket and said, ‘Here,’” Deni says.
Patrick told her, “I’ve been trying to give you this all night.”
“I think I laughed and kissed him and said, ‘Yes,’” Deni says. — Michael Donahue
Holly + David
Music brought them together, and their music remains decades on.
“We met in piano class,” says David Shotsberger.
It was a mandatory class for serious music students on the campus of Penn State University, piano proficiency. In it, students sat at their own keyboards, listening to themselves on headphones. The professor could select which student to hear and speak to with a special headphone setup. A few keyboards away from his own, Shotsberger saw another student named Holly.
“I noticed her, and the professor noticed me noticing her and told me — through the headphones — to pay attention to the lesson,” Shotsberger says, laughing.
That was 1993. Holly studied flute performance. David studied music composition and theory. He was a hometown guy, from right there in State College. She was from Pittsburgh. They became friends.
About a year later, they ran into each other on campus and agreed on a date. Dinner was at the then-Penn-State-famous Gingerbread Man (or G-Man). The restaurant closed in 2014 to make way for Primanti Brothers, an iconic Pittsburgh sandwich shop and bar.
Whatever David and Holly talked about on that first date stuck, and that conversation almost certainly included music. For years, the couple would talk about music, play music together, and go to shows together. Holly would travel with, occasionally sing with, and sell merch for David’s family’s traveling gospel and country group, New Life.
The two stayed together and married in 1998 at the Eisenhower Chapel right on the campus of Penn State. That was May. By July, David had selected the University of Memphis for his doctoral work and the couple relocated to the Bluff City. By then, Holly earned a master’s degree in speech language pathology and a job hunt in a new city loomed.
“ I think when you’re that young, you’re just a little bit more adventurous, maybe, willing to go do new things and go to new places when you know no one there,” she says. “So, moving to Memphis felt like an exciting adventure at the time.”
They stuck together, relied on each other, established Memphis as home base, and made friends. Memphis was temporary, anyway. Who knew where they’d end up after David finished his doctorate program?
Turned out, Memphis had plans for David and Holly. He earned a one-year appointment at the U of M and later became the director of operations for the Memphis Symphony Orchestra for a couple of years. Holly worked as a speech language pathologist in early intervention clinics in Marion, Arkansas. David is now the creative director for Advent Presbyterian Church and directs the jazz band and teaches music technology at Rhodes College. The couple raised two children together, and Holly now works as a speech language pathologist in the Memphis-Shelby County Schools.
Memphis and music have remained constants in David and Holly’s lives and relationship over two decades here.
“For sure it’s about the people that we’ve met here,” Holly says. “Memphis has brought many dear friends that we’ve done life with for 25 years or so. They’re family now. So, that makes Memphis home.”
They still play music together and know each other in a special way that only musicians can. David says Holly is the person he’s played music with the longest, around 32 years or thereabouts.
“She’s one of the best musicians I’ve ever met in my life,” David says. — Toby Sells
Patricia + Anthony
In high school, Anthony and Patricia Lockhart ran against each other for class president. Patricia won, but Anthony, to this day, claims it was rigged.
“Now that is slightly true,” admits Patricia. “I think the principal had something to do with it. I didn’t get the popular vote, but I got the teacher vote.”
Still, that didn’t stop Anthony from asking her out once they were at the University of Memphis. “The light hit my skin just right one day,” she says. Anthony says they were distant friends and he wanted to see where things would go, so he looked up her email address in the campus directory.
“She sent her number back real quick,” he says.
For their first date, they went to McAllister’s Deli and the movies at the Malco Paradiso. Neither of them can remember what movie they saw, but they know it was a good first date and they know it was March 2005, an anniversary they still celebrate today. “I’m forced to do that,” Anthony says, to which Patricia replies, “Oh my gosh, you are not forced; you are highly recommended to comply.”
By November, Patricia had moved into Anthony’s, and by April, Anthony proposed. A year later, they were married. “This is not a story we recommend of our kids ’cause this is just the way the cookie crumbled for us,” Patricia says. “My aunties even were like, ‘Patricia, wait five years.’ And I didn’t see the point in waiting because I knew that I was going to be with him.”
“We had fun. We wanted to do everything together,” Anthony says. “We had a great time growing and experiencing each other. It was like we were progressing together. We had a lot of firsts together.”
“If I were to give advice to people, I would say the person that you married is going to change,” Patricia says. “The Anthony that’s sitting beside me is different from the Anthony — in some ways, not a whole lot of ways — that I married, that I started dating 20 years ago. His views have changed; taste buds have changed. And it’s all about loving a person through their changes, and Anthony has seriously loved me through all of my quirky changes and mood swings, especially with hormones and having kids — all of the things.”
“Communication is definitely necessary, either good or bad,” Anthony adds. “[You need to] have an open mind and communication.”
Today, Patricia, an assistant principal and writer (sometimes for the Flyer), and Anthony, a site inspector for the Memphis and Shelby County Division of Planning and Development, are parents to four children: Eve (11), Elijah (13), Elliott (13), and Aiden (16). The kids say their favorite parts of their parents’ marriage are their humor, how well they get along, and “the way dad looks down at mom and [she] looks up at [him] when [they’re] in the kitchen standing close to each other.” And Eve, especially, likes that she can poke fun at them.
“We’re a big family, and we enjoy each other, like genuinely enjoy being around each other,” Patricia says. “And what I love about being a parent with Anthony is that I could walk in and be like, ‘I’m a 20 percent parent today. That’s it.’ And he’s just like, ‘Okay, I got 60, and 80 is enough for today.’”
“I think parenting definitely helps you kind of grow a little bit,” Anthony adds.
But in between parenting and working, the two also know to make time for each other, to date each other. “I’ll be at work, and sometimes being an assistant principal is extra, extra stressful,” Patricia says. “I’ll get this calendar alert and it’s him putting a date on my calendar.” — Abigail Morici