Love Story: Nancy and 'Sindo' Alvarez

Nancy and Gumersindo "Sindo" Alvarez of Elmont danced the night away when they first met. Nancy tells their story.

In April 1968, my friend Jeanie suggested we go to a dance in Manhattan hosted by a Portuguese soccer team. I was 20 and it sounded like fun, so I said yes.

We went with her sister, Joanie, and Joanie's husband, Joe, who knew the team's manager. I was immediately asked to dance and continued dancing with several young men. An hour into the evening Joe introduced me to his cousin, Sindo.

Sindo, 22, had emigrated from Spain in 1964. We exchanged greetings, and I went off to dance with someone else. Little did I know that our meeting had been prearranged by Jeanie and her brother-in-law.

Later, Sindo asked me for a dance, the first of several in a row. In fact, we laughed at one point when the band started to play music and he quickly rose to start dancing with me before realizing the song was "Happy Birthday."

We sat talking and I was enjoying his company when another young man asked me to dance. Sindo rose and said, "She's with me." I danced with him the rest of the evening, and later he took me back to my home in East Harlem.

A week later we went on our first date to a drive-in movie in the Bronx, where he lived. From then on it was steady dating for us.

In 1969, Jeanie got married a week after we graduated from Hunter College. I was her maid of honor. At the reception I caught the bouquet, and Sindo caught the garter. I remember my father's face when this happened. He knew something was "in the air."

That night, Sindo took me to Playland in Rye and surprised me with a marriage proposal. We wed on Nov. 7, 1970, at St. Ann's Church in East Harlem, my home parish, followed by a reception at the Astoria Manor in Queens.

I had just begun a teaching job so we postponed our honeymoon until the summer of 1972. We spent five weeks in Sindo's hometown in Galicia, Spain, where I was welcomed by his family. It was his first trip back since moving to New York. I persuaded him to show me more of Spain. I tease him about the one-week whirlwind tour of Madrid and Barcelona, but I knew he wanted to get back to his family in Galicia.

In 1975 we moved to Elmont. I retired in 2003 from the New York City Department of Education, where I worked for 33 years as a teacher, assistant principal and principal at several schools in the Bronx. Sindo worked in construction before starting his own carpet installation business. He is semiretired. We return each year to Spain, have taken a Mediterranean cruise and have also traveled to Italy and the Caribbean.

Our daughter and son-in-law have blessed us with two grandchildren. They keep us very busy and add joy to our lives. We look forward to many years ahead together.