BlackHairDiva
Well-Known Member
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/05/15/f...n-stewart-vows.html?pagewanted=1&ref=weddings
Donatella Arpaia and Allan Stewart
IN early 2010, Dr. Allan Stewart, a cardiac surgeon, was challenged by a patient on whom he had operated the previous year, to sign up for the New York City Triathlon. The doctor broke two ribs while training, but soldiered on, knowing his patient had overcome a much bigger obstacle.
The day before the triathlon, while looking out at the sea of Nike-and-neoprene clad jocks who had gathered at a related health and fitness expo, he suddenly found himself distracted by a curvy blonde in heels.
“She had this aura,” said Dr. Stewart, 41. And he needed an introduction. So he looked down at his BlackBerry, feigned technological absorption, and walked straight into her.
She said her name was “D.” He tried to offer advice on triathlons but admitted that he hadn’t actually completed one yet. She wouldn’t give her phone number. Instead, she proffered an e-mail address that contained no personal information.
He finished the race the next day, just 30 minutes behind his patient. The next challenge on his agenda? That leggy blonde.
Donatella Arpaia had gone to the expo looking for a way to trim down after weeks in Los Angeles shooting “The Next Iron Chef,” on which she is a judge. She’d just been through a breakup and had spent time in California reflecting on what she wanted.
“I was speaking to a friend who said: ‘You have everything. You’re beautiful, you’re this, you’re that. If you aren’t with the right person, it’s only because that’s what you’re choosing,’ ” she said.
“I’ve always been a very driven businesswoman,” said Ms. Arpaia, 39, who is the proprietor of Mia Dona and Donatella, both Manhattan restaurants. “But I’ve also always wanted to be married and have kids. I really thought a lot about what she said.”
Dr. Stewart e-mailed her, offering advice on a bike for her triathlon training. Though it crossed her mind that he might be some kind of stalker of reality TV show judges, his blue eyes had left a positive impression on her.
So “D” wrote back. After a few more exchanges, she let it slip that she was Italian and had written a cookbook. Dr. Stewart, who never cooked and knew little about restaurants, spent hours combing the Web for cookbook authors with “D” names.
He, too, withheld information. While noting that he hailed from a family of five children raised in North Arlington, N.J., he didn’t offer that he was the director of the aortic surgery program at NewYork-Presbyterian/Columbia hospital, or that he was part of the team that operated on former President Bill Clinton’s heart, or that one of his partners is Dr. Mehmet Oz.
Ms. Arpaia was born into her business. She and her siblings grew up on Long Island taking coats at the Woodmere restaurant their father, Lello Arpaia, ran.
“High-end dining is dying out,” said Umberto Arpaia, her older brother, who has Cellini on East 54th Street. “Kids want Chipotle.” That’s why Papa Arpaia, who now owns Fiorini on East 56th, insisted his daughters go to law school. Ms. Arpaia complied, joined a firm, and then persuaded her dad to open a restaurant with her.
They started Bellini in 1998. She would open several more restaurants before the 2008 recession, and some ruptured partnerships brought about the closing of Dona and the sale of her interest in David Burke & Donatella.
“Whether I make the wrong decision or the right one in my business, I’m always sure about it,” Ms. Arpaia said. “But my personal life has been the opposite — totally tortured.”
So she wasn’t so eager to go out on a date with Dr. Stewart. She canceled three times before agreeing to have a drink with him. “What if I wasn’t attracted to him?” she said.
He told her about his career, which he decided upon after watching a heart transplant on “Nova.” “The heart is such a storied organ,” he said. “It’s encased in a cage and is the subject of so many poems and songs.”
But her heart was out of reach. She spent the whole date on her BlackBerry, he recalled.
That kind of indifference was probably just the siren call that he needed. Divorced since 2007, with two daughters, now ages 6 and 9, Dr. Stewart described the period that followed as “living the dream,” he said. “Making money, dating. Another marriage was not on the agenda.”
He also was open to the unexpected: “We’re put into each other’s lives for a reason. As secularly successful as I’ve been, to believe that’s all there is, can make you a really selfish and horrible person to be around.”
Ms. Arpaia, who thought “he was just some nerdy doctor,” was taken aback, she said, upon learning “he was dating, like 14 women!”
The restaurant business, she said, doesn’t have that kind of turnaround. “In my line of work, a lot of people settle. I didn’t want to settle.”
On their early dates, she tried playing “the girl,” she said. When he took her to the restaurant Tao, she grew weary as they sat at the bar for an hour. “Finally, I was like, ‘Can I stop being the date now?’ “ Showing her mettle, she waltzed over to the maître d’ and they were seated right away.
He saw it as an “emasculating event,” he said, and balked. “Professional courtesy,” she explained. “Do you wait in line at the hospital?”
Things moved along briskly from there. She never slept at home after the third date. She gave him a copy of her cookbook, inscribed with the words: “You take care of my heart, I’ll take care of your stomach.”
“She’s just so warm — she’s someone who will help anyone anytime,” Dr. Stewart said. Behind her polished public image, he noted, she’s also someone who likes to stay home watching a movie “in a robe and ponytail.”
With him, she found she wasn’t falling into the pattern of imagining taking “qualities from this person and qualities from that person and jamming them into one,” Mr. Potato Head style, she said. Ms. Arpaia added: “There’s not one thing I would change. He’s my best friend.”
He asked her to marry him every morning for a month, before showing the seriousness of his intentions by hanging a diamond ring on their first Christmas tree. Ms. Arpaia went out and bought a Size 6 Monique Lhuillier wedding gown, only to find out a month later that she was pregnant.
On April 30, friends — many of whom started out as his patients or her customers — gathered for their wedding at the Plaza. Murmurs rose from the crowd as Ms. Arpaia headed down the aisle, looking radiant in the Lhuillier confection, which she had let out a bit. The Rev. Amandus J. Derr, the Lutheran pastor who married the couple, was soon joined by Rabbi Peter J. Rubinstein, a longtime customer of Ms. Arpaia’s, who offered a wish that the couple’s love keep them together even in moments of “emergencies, be they culinary or cardiac.”
..i wouldn't lose any hope at only age 39.
I don't see the issue here. I know multiple women who married well into their 40's.
I also didn't like that he was dating 14 other women while trying to holler at her...then she start sexing him after the third date, and unprotected at that. 
Good luck to them!
