The Story of How Sam and Foley Found True Love, as told to Matthew

Let's see, how did we actually meet...?

"So how should I start this, Foley? How about: 'It was a dark and stormy night...'?"

It was a dark and stormy night, come to think of it...

The party @ Martina's

I met him at a party of Martina's. I had heard a lot about Foley, but not actually met him. Martina said, "You'd be perfect for him".

Martina, as you know, has always been somewhat of a matchmaker. She had mentioned that Sam existed, and that I might be interested...

So I was interested in meeting him, but when I actually did....

Now, there are a lot of things I'm not good at - basketball, fantasy sports, writing my own 'how we met' story - but I do have the skill of Figuring Out When People Don't Like Me. And Sam didn't, not one bit.

I thought he was basically a total waste of space.

I thought, oh well, I've got other fish to fry. Or is it 'there's more fish in the sea'?

He was arrogant, he had this attitude, I was just, "That's enough for me, thank you very much!"

Anyhow, I kept my distance - which seemed to suit her fine. I did think she was a nice and good-looking girl, though, and somewhere the thought of 'maybe one day' was floating around in my head.

A year or 2 later....

I'm living with Charmian who is allergic to just about everything. And I'm trying to find a shampoo to use that doesn't trigger her allergies. I had gone through probably thirty different shampoos when I finally found one, which happened to be an Aveda product.

I arrive at Martina's - yes, another party of hers - of course I haven't seen Sam since the last time, ages ago, but I do remember her not liking me very much.

Around that same time I was at another of Martina's parties. I was having a conversation with my friend Dana and we ended up talking about Aveda, when Foley somehow joined in -

She's there. I overhear a conversation between her and my friend Dana, about - of all things - Aveda hair care products.

At this point in his life, you have to realize, Foley loved his hair -

I too used Aveda, and so I joined in the conversation.

- anyway, we were talking, and he was very different than the Foley I met the first time. I was thoroughly impressed with him. Not just because of hair products....

I was being reasonably charming, and so things went a little better this time.

I thought to myself, "This is not the same guy!"

A little later that evening...

I'll leave this next part for Foley. He likes to tell it.

Sam and I got off on the right foot, so naturally I invited her out to see my new car. I had just bought a reasonably new Volkswagen a few days earlier, and couldn't help showing it off to her. So we get out there and I open the door for her, then go around to the drivers side. I sit down in the car, and my rather large cell phone - it's in my back pocket - makes a whole bunch of beeping sounds as I do so. Real smooth. I take it out and chuck it in the glove compartment. Then we go for a drive.

At the end of the evening, being the gentleman that I am, I offer her a ride home. She accepts. When I drop her off, we decide that we should see each other again and so we exchange phone numbers.

Oh. And the next morning, I get a phone call from my mother. The first thing she says to me, out of the blue, is, "So who's the girl?" She tells me she had gotten a message on her answering machine the night before, of me - sounding distant - having a conversation with a girl.

Somehow, as I sat on the phone in the car and threw it in the glove box, I also managed to dial my mother's phone number!

Meanwhile...Studio 58, first year...

But then I was in school at Studio 58. It's quite an intense theatre program, and they don't give you time for much outside of school, so this wasn't very helpful in terms of starting a relationship with anyone.

We saw each other rarely, but we talked on the phone. We were both dating others. Martina would keep me updated - 'she's going out with this guy from school' or whoever, and I would think, 'Oh well, I guess this isn't going to work".

I phoned her occasionally; she phoned back...usually weeks later. This is while she's attending Studio 58, of course. Most men would have been discouraged by this, but either there was something I didn't get, or I was just really determined. I'm still not sure which.

Time passes...

But then...as her time at Studio was coming to a close, my 25th birthday was coming up as well. I was planning an Extravaganza. And I invited Sam, but didn't expect to see her.

Chameleon Club -- Foley's 25th B-Day Party

Foley invited me but I was working on a show at Studio at the time. So I said I'd come late. So it's about 12:30 or 1 am when we get there. I brought Cindy and her friend Beth - I needed reinforcements - I wanted their opinion of Foley.

Everyone was showing up at the Chameleon at around 9 pm to avoid any long line-ups. Leif and I, meanwhile, went to my then-bachelor apartment and proceeded to drink an entire bottle of Wild Turkey Bourbon while talking until 10:30 - when we finally looked up at the clock. Now, the type of alcohol we were drinking doesn't make you Sloppy and Drunk, but more of a Smooth and Debonair drunk. So we get there, the line-up is huge. But I don't stop, I just keep on walking , past everyone, right through the door and into the club. Like I owned the place. No one even tried to stop me. It was only later that I found out that the only reason I got in is because, behind me, Leif had called the head bouncer by name just before he grabbed me. Turns out he and Leif were old high school buddies.

Inside: It seemed like a quarter of the bar was there for my birthday party...

So we get there, and there's Foley: In His Element. He's suave, smooth, talking to everyone.

Out of the corner of my eye, I see Sam. She's wearing the loudest zebra-print jacket I've ever seen.

He was quite charming that night

I laid it on thick - flirted, danced, you name it.

...and I was quite happy being charmed."

By the end of the night, I felt we had made a real connection.

At one point, I asked Cindy what he thought of him and she said: "He's awfully slick, isn't he?" I had to admit, yeah, he was.

Summer of love...

When she finished with Studio 58 a few weeks later, she actually began returning my calls. We dated all summer.

We hung out a lot that summer. We didn't date. We were just friends for the longest time - 5 months, at least. I confided to Martina that I liked him. Apparently he said the same thing to her about me. So, though we didn't know it, Martina kept planning things to keep bringing us together.

One and a half years later we moved in together. Three and a half years later, we're getting married.

September 1st, 2002, was five years to the day that he actually asked me to be his steady girlfriend.