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. )

Everything was going well, but I wanted a transfer to the downtown Tampa office. I also wanted to expand my dating options since my good Florida friends were either tying the knot, dating quarterbacks or having babies. At the same time, I got into a public disagreement with 50 Cent over something I wrote, and I also had a front-page story featuring a fun interview with then-Bucs coach Jon Gruden about his first-ever job shucking oysters at Hooters.

I had a strong body of work from Florida by then, as my gift was — is — finding stories no one else could, so The Boston Globe came calling. I was ready for a new work assignment and, as I told my boss, I was also in the market for new guys to date. When The Globe offered, this Chicagoan saw it as a sign to work in another big city, get back up north and find respite from ‘canes and alligators under my car in the parking lot. And, not for nothing, in the Bean — somewhere between Harvard and MIT and UMass — it was highly likely there might be eligible bachelors there too.