The Cable Guy Invited Me to a Cookout and The Rest is History

Or, how my love of ‘The Sopranos’ led to a Comcastic romance

Picture of an image by photojournalist Carrie Pratt, who worked with me on many a story in Florida.

I left a job I loved because I wanted to find a husband.

Well. Kind of.

I was loving life in Tampa Bay, living near one of the world’s most beautiful beaches, hanging out with my sorority sisters and the Bucs players they dated. But that was at night and on the weekends. Well, some weekends. A lot of the time, I was at work. As a reporter for the St. Petersburg Times (Florida’s largest newspaper, now renamed the Tampa Bay Times), I covered city halls, and Florida state government and hurricanes and immigration and weird “Florida man” stuff.

I talked on the regular with Charlie Crist before he was governor, and learned firsthand that Gov. Jeb Bush is a lot taller than you think, and he always answers questions from the short reporter over to the side (me!) I even wrote a piece, “Siguiendo a Francisco,” about the area’s first immigrant from the city of Los Remedios in the Mexican state of Hidalgo, a guy named Francisco — a legend really. (Sidenote: Working on that piece with the imitable Latin American correspondent David Adams was and is a highlight of my journalistic career. )