Love Story: Once he met her, he was on the right track

Mitch Macy of North Bellmore talks about meeting his wife, Shari (Hulkower) Macy.

In 1980 I was 23, living with my family in North Wantagh and working in Manhattan as an accountant. At the Wantagh train station one morning, I was waiting to catch an early train to the city. On the platform was a cute girl. Back then the westbound train might arrive on either side of the platform, so I asked the "cute girl" which side the train would come in on.

She looked at me and said, "The side where everyone is standing."

Duh!

We sat next to each other for the ride, and we couldn’t stop talking. I found out later she had recently had her palm read and was told she was going to meet her future husband and that he would be a professional whose first or last name would begin with an "M."

As soon as I arrived at my desk at work that morning, I called my mother and told her I had met the girl I was going to marry.

Our first date was at a St John's University basketball game at Madison Square Garden with dinner before the game. Over dinner, I told Shari I was going to marry her. She was taken aback but laughed at what I said.

On the next date I told her I loved her. We had a great time dating — going to the beach, bars, dancing and enjoying each other’s company.

I proposed to her before a family Thanksgiving Day dinner at the Salty Bay Yacht Club in Freeport. We were married nine months later at Temple Beth Shalom in Lawrence.

It almost was a brief marriage. On our honeymoon in Aruba, small Sunfish sailboats were available to hotel guests. Having spent many years at a summer camp, where I sailed the same type of boat, I told Shari, "Let’s take out a boat." The guy tending the boats asked if I knew how to sail.

I told him, "I’ve been sailing since I was a kid." You’ve heard about Aruba’s reputation for being windy? I can personally confirm it’s true. Needless to say, we immediately capsized our little Sunfish under strong winds — but survived.

We returned to an apartment in Forest Hills. Our son, Joshua, was born while we lived there. We later moved to a home in Baldwin, and later our current home in North Bellmore, where our daughters, Andrea and Robyn, were born within three years.

I went into my family’s service station business in Deer Park and worked there for the past 35 years. I sold the station last year and am now semiretired. Shari was a tour guide for a company that offered amazing tours to senior groups. Unfortunately, COVID-19 put an end to that, but I look forward to many trips with my own personal tour guide. We also both enjoy tennis, and I love golfing.

Shari is the funniest, most beautiful person I know. She keeps me laughing every day, and in these times, who doesn’t need that? She is truly my everything as "our song," sung by Rod Stewart, says.

In addition to our three adult children, we have two spectacular grandkids. Shari and I look forward to a Thanksgiving getaway with the entire family.

If I could talk to my younger self back in 1980, I would say: It only gets better from here. Just as the palm reader foretold, we have been very happily married.

— With Ann Donahue-Smukler