It Happened One Night

Tanya (BA 2006 VIC): We met 10 years ago, the summer before I was about to start at U of T, at the Blockbuster store that Adam worked at. I was there to buy Doritos with a few girlfriends, and Adam and I started talking about Stanley Kubrick. It turned out he was going into his third year of Cinema Studies – the same film program I was about to enter. I worked at a competing independent video store down the street and I later got his number from our database – which is probably illegal. We went out for coffee and had a few movie dates. I found Adam to be thoughtful and generous, as well as a great listener. After graduation, we both went on to film-related careers. Adam is a film critic and writer, and I’ve worked as a publicist for the Toronto International Film Festival and the National Film Board. We got married two years ago, in the former Toronto movie theatre (the Eglinton Grand) we both used to frequent as children. The marquee read “It Happened One Night – Tanya & Adam.” Seemed like a perfect location.

Adam (BA 2005 UC, MA 2009): It’s very fortunate that I was covering someone else’s shift that day at Blockbuster. Around Christmas that year, I was putting together a year-end list of the best films in a campus café and Tanya went through each one with me. I remember thinking that if she has the patience to sit through this, then that probably bodes well for the future. From the beginning, she was so friendly and smart, and got along with all of my friends. We met young, but we’ve always given each other a lot of space and pursued different things: for example, Tanya studied Italian Culture in Siena, Italy, during one of our first summers together and I’ve travelled a lot for film festivals. When I went back to do my MA, it made me feel more happily adult, and I proposed to Tanya within hours of turning in my final paper. We’re now talking about buying a house and having a family. We’re not old-fashioned but the very conventional progression of meeting someone, getting married and starting a life together just seemed right for both of us.