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Amy Scherzer's diary

Heart Beat: For couple, Tide binds

Their first meeting didn't go so well, but soon an affinity for Alabama's finest (sorry Auburn) helps them find a world of things in common.

By AMY SCHERZER
Published September 8, 2006

BALLAST POINT

The way she tells it, Roselle Zayas went to the wrong Hyatt Regency hotel and ended up with the right husband. Carl Cronan says his inadvertent insult, now forgiven, almost ended things before they began.

"That night began as a comedy of errors," said Zayas, who wasn't laughing at the time.

A University of Alabama alum, she volunteered to work at a high school recruitment fair in March 2004 and planned to attend a reception at the Hyatt the next evening.

"I'd lived in Tampa about three months and barely knew my way around town," said Zayas, an editor at AchieveGlobal, a corporate training and consulting firm. "I saw a Hyatt downtown, but it was deserted." She searched the adjacent University Club before someone guided her to the Grand Hyatt Tampa Bay on the Courtney Campbell Parkway.

The meeting was over by the time she arrived and grabbed her name tag. She missed the instructions to add the year she graduated to the badge.

Cronan, Class of '85, spotted her entering the room. He worked up an opening line as he walked over to introduce himself. It went downhill from there.

"I asked her if she had a kid interested in attending the University of Alabama," he said, still able to feel her frosty stare.

"He could tell he torpedoed," she said. "I was 33, never married and not someone's mother."

Cronan apologized profusely and tried to extricate himself from the blunder. She let him speak because he said he was a reporter for the Tampa Bay Business Journal.

Zayas set him straight - she was an alum, too, Class of 1992, and noted her last job had been business editor of the Charlotte Sun in Port Charlotte.

Over dessert and coffee they found other things in common. They earned the same degree in communications, taught by some of the same professors, seven years apart.

Both wrote for the college paper, the Crimson White. Both worked for the same paper in Decatur, Ala.

Both are Virgos, born eight days apart. Zayas turns 36 on Tuesday; Cronan will be 43 on Sept. 20.

Cronan grew up in Birmingham, Ala., and started at Alabama in Tuscaloosa, thinking he would be an electrical engineer.

"Calculus ended that," said Cronan, who wrote for the TimesDaily in Florence, Ala., for eight years and the Lakeland Ledger after that.

Zayas was born in San Juan, Puerto Rico, to a military family. She learned to speak English in Germany before moving to Texas and Florida. After reporting for two small Alabama newspapers, she moved to Port Charlotte in 1998 to be near family.

Zayas used her reporting skills to check out Cronan. She searched for his byline online.

"I was curious about his writing on a professional level," she said. Three weeks passed before he e-mailed her and included his home phone number.

Zayas called and they met for a long lunch. The next date was at Stumps in Channelside.

"I brought my wing girls," both future bridesmaids, she said, and Carl had a friend visiting from Alabama. The girls distracted the friend all night.

"We both owe them. They took a major one for the team," Zayas said.

Love rolled in like the Crimson Tide winning a national championship. Both bleed crimson when it comes to Tide Pride and 'Bama football. Within six months, he was helping her move into his Ballast Point home.

During summer 2005, Cronan bought and hid a diamond ring in his closet. It stayed there until September when he hatched a plan.

"I told Roselle we were going to dinner with another couple at Oystercatchers," he said. "Behind the Hyatt where we first met."

Great, she said. Who are they?

"Helen and Andy," he said, supplying the first two names that popped into his head. As a kid, Cronan never missed an episode of the Andy Griffith Show and still loves the re-runs. He thinks Don Knotts is hilarious and gets a kick out of the gentle moral lessons the 1960s sitcom offers.

As the couple took in the gorgeous bay view, Zayas remembers thinking what a nice place it would be to get engaged.

"Thank God an internal sensor stopped me from blurting that out and ruining the surprise," she said.

Cronan launched with a confession, forgetting the speech he had practiced.

Our reservations are for Armani's, he said, pulling out the ring box. Dropping to one knee, he asked her to be his wife. Her answer came so softly and tearfully that he asked her to repeat it.

Later, she remembered to ask, "Who are Andy and Helen?"

They married May 27 in the courtyard garden of the Ybor City State Museum in a ceremony befitting 'Bama pride. A band of crimson satin set off her white wedding gown and matched his vest and tie. Crimson roses dotted the wedding cake, and bride and groom elephants, the university mascot, danced on top. Dinner was a Puerto Rican buffet; the honeymoon was a Caribbean cruise.

Mr. and Mrs. Cronan plan to continue recruiting future 'Bama students until they have one of their own.

Amy Scherzer can be reached at scherzer@sptimes.com or 813 226-3332.

[Last modified September 6, 2006, 10:21:45]