When I was at the Air Traffic Control Academy in Oklahoma City I went to my first karaoke at the Holiday Inn bar. I was instantly hooked. I’d always loved to sing. I used to sing along with records and I’d sing songs over and over until I could sound just like the person on the record. I’m sure my grandmother was sick to death of hearing “Sugar Sugar” by the Archies. I participated in a few talent shows over the years and was in a choir while I was in grade school for a while, but that was about it. I loved Broadway albums and had a pretty decent range. But I also played no instruments and so I either had to sing a capella or find someone to accompany me. Karaoke fixed all of that. Not only did it have a full orchestra behind me, but it put the words on the screen in front of me. When I got back to Connecticut I started looking for places to go sing.
I didn’t really know anyone else who liked to karaoke but I still found many karaoke shows all over southern Connecticut. I did pretty well singing, but I loved all of the songs with soprano voices. Barbra Streisand, Whitney Houston, etc. I could hit a lot of those notes, but it was in my falsetto voice which isn’t where my power was. I was really an alto. At one point I went to the fair with my best friend Robin. They had a karaoke booth and you could go in and sing two songs and they’d record them for you and give you a tape to take home. So I waited in line for a long time and finally got to record. I chose a Whitney Houston song and “What I did for Love” from Chorus Line. There was a guy doing the recording and he talked to me in the headphones and told me when to sing . I sang both songs and he told me he got them recorded. Then he said, “Can I ask you a question?” I said, “Sure.” He said, “Why didn’t you sing two Broadway songs, because that one was great?” I said, “Yeah, you know how everyone always wants to be able to sing like the famous singers.” He said. “Yeah, but you should choose songs that are closer to your normal range because you are great at them.” I never met the guy, he was just a voice in my headphones, but what he said stuck with me. On the way home I played the tape for Robin. About a quarter of the way through the song she turned to me and said, “That’s YOU?” I just smiled and said, “I told you I could sing.” She said, “Yeah, but you never told me you could sing like that!”
So I started singing songs that were more in the alto range and I started getting better feedback from people. I also started placing in some of the Karaoke competitions. One of the women I competed against sang “Somebody to Love” by Jefferson Airplane and I was so impressed with the way she sang it. So I started playing around with it and I did pretty well with it because I was belting it out using my chest voice rather than my head voice. Then I tried to sing “White Rabbit” (Go Ask Alice) because I had always loved it when I was a kid. I’d do okay in the beginning of it, but when it went up I’d switch to my head voice and would lose the power and it would just sound like I was screeching. Then one night I was out at the Love Boat in Groton, Connecticut and I had had a few drinks. When it came time to start going up the register I never switched to my head voice I just kept going higher and higher with my chest voice. The crowd went crazy and I learned something about my voice that night. I could hit a lot of high notes with my chest voice.
Suddenly I started winning a few competitions with “White Rabbit.” Then one night I was at the Love Boat and I sang and got a great response and then a guy who I had seen a few times named James got up and sang a Frank Sinatra song and he had a great voice. He was sitting near me and the lady at the next table over grabbed his arm as he was walking by and said, “Hey, you two should sing together. You should put an act together and go over and audition at Foxwoods.” (Foxwoods was the new casino that had just opened up in Ledyard, Connecticut). The lady was pretty drunk so I wasn’t sure she knew what she was talking about, but he turned to me and asked if I would be interested in doing that. I said “Sure, why not.” He gave me his phone number.
I never called him. Partly because I was kind of seeing someone at the time and partly because I had the feeling that he was interested in me and I wasn’t really interested in him that way. He was a little shorter than me and not really the type of guy that I was attracted to. Then a couple of weeks later I went into the airport for lunch even though it was my day off because I was friends with most of the people who worked there and he was there with a friend he was dropping off for a flight. I sat at the counter and he came over to talk to me, completely ignoring his friend. He sat with me and talked during my whole lunch and then told me he had to put his friend on the plane and he’d be right back and not to leave. It was my day off so I figured why not? He walked his friend out to the plane and said, “See ya” and came right back.
During our talk I’d told him about my Rottweiler Samson (I had found another home for Delilah because I just couldn’t take care of both of them.) I told him that I had to teach Samson to be better on a leash because I hadn’t socialized him enough and he was too big not to be socialized. James said, “Well I don’t have anything to do now that my friend is gone and you said it’s your day off right? So why don’t we go walk him right now?” I found myself agreeing and the next thing I knew we were taking Samson on a long walk down the beach. About two thirds of the way through the walk James turned to me and said, “So how am I doing so far?” I was really impressed. I had never had anyone be so interested in getting my attention before. I told him he was doing great and agreed to go out with him that week.
Our first date was in May of 1992. We got engaged on my birthday in September when we went out to Seattle to meet my parents. We got married October 10th of that year and planned a big celebration on our one year anniversary for family and friends. It just made sense to get married if we were going to be living together because he would get benefits from the military if we were married. When I look back on it now it’s amazing that it was less than six months from the time we met until the time we got married. But we were both 32 and had dated lots of different people so it seemed like we should know what we wanted by then. We were both pretty thin. I had kept most of my weight off, only gaining about 20 pounds from my lowest and he was the thinnest I’d ever see him. I think one of the things that also attracted me to him was the fact that we both had fought our weight in our younger years. At one point he said that we should make a pact that we would never let ourselves get fat again. I refused. This should have been a sign if I’d allowed myself to think about it. But I just told myself I didn’t want to make some deal with my future husband that could cause us problems in our marriage. Realistically, I think I didn’t want to make a promise I wasn’t sure I could keep. And the fact that we’d both had problems maintaining our weight should also have been a sign right? But I wasn’t that person any more…right? Right?