News
TAMPA
She'd been dancing all her life, with a repertoire of ballet and jazz and tap. But now, she was just dancing with no concern for technique. She was being free.
Donnie Villanova noticed Amanda Soler on the floor of Hyde Park Cafe, where he managed the VIP section. She was tall, with cascading brown hair and twinkling eyes, and she moved like nothing he'd seen before.
He had a flashlight in his hands. He flipped it on and shined it on Amanda. She noticed him and smiled.
Amanda went to college in Miami, but she was home for a couple of weeks and went back to Hyde Park Cafe several times. Donnie flipped the light on her again and again. On the third visit, he got up the courage to talk to her.
"I love watching you dance," he said.
They exchanged phone numbers and talked on the phone for three hours after they got home at 3 a.m. They learned about each other's heritage, hers Cuban and his Italian. They talked about their families, how they both came from divorce, how they adored their mothers and credited them with everything. Amanda's mother, Marilyn McPhail, was a mainstay on the Tampa social scene who threw over-the-top parties for her daughter every year.
Amanda went back to school. She texted Donnie first.
Peek-a-boo.
She came back to Tampa for the Gasparilla parade, and Donnie mentioned he'd be there and maybe they could meet up. But that day, Amanda's cell phone died. She wanted to find Donnie, but she had no charger. She didn't know his number by heart. How would she possibly see him?
In a crowd of thousands, with beads up to their necks, Amanda and Donnie spotted each other. Donnie was at a party at a house on Bayshore Boulevard. Amanda ran to him, and he scooped her up in his arms and carried her over the fence.
They dated long-distance. They had everything in common. They expected the most from each other. They were both Virgos, both had tempers, both had the same mannerisms.
He came to Miami to watch her perform with her college dance team, blowing her kisses from the stands at games. One day, when Amanda was in town watching a movie with Donnie, he said, "I want you only to be mine." Amanda moved back to Tampa and finished her degree at the University of South Florida.
In 2009, he proposed in the Dominican Republic at a private table on the beach, with Amanda's whole family eating dinner in eyeshot. He brought out the ring in a diamond-crusted Faberge egg that belonged to Amanda's mother.
"Eleven-11-11," he said. They would get married on a lucky day.
Two years later, at the T. Pepin Hospitality Centre in Tampa, surrounded by 300 people at a lavish affair, Donnie, 30, and Amanda, 24, danced together as husband and wife, under a spotlight, with lights beaming up from the floor.
Stephanie Hayes can be reached at shayes@tampabay.com or (727) 893-8857.
Loading...
