Unexpected love made Carla Blue and Rudy Rodriquez believe in second chances.
Meet: Both divorced, they met in April 2004 behind her Denver home. Looking less-than-glamorous in baggy shorts and ski goggles, Blue was working in her garden. Rodriquez, who was remodeling a neighbor’s barn, noticed a commotion after Blue persuaded another neighbor’s father to jump into the Dumpster and make room for her weeds.
She offered the men drinks. “Both said yes to the beer, but the other guy went away,” says Blue. “Rudy stayed.”
She got right to the point, asking about his marital status and dating plans. “I totally didn’t want to get married,” she says, “so when you meet someone, you want to make sure they aren’t looking for a wife.”
When Blue mentioned an upcoming trip to New Orleans, Rodriquez regaled her with tales of his life on the Louisiana bayou. The conversation lasted two hours and ended with Rodriquez offering to show Blue “the real Southeast” Louisiana.
Match: Rodriquez and Blue indeed spent time in New Orleans, but it was shooting mini marshmallows from a homemade gun, seeing fireflies for the first time, floating on the bayou and speeding through sugar-cane fields at 140 mph on a motorcycle that got Blue’s attention.
“I’m mesmerized by this man. If I had met him 10 years ago, we would not have played well together. In my old life, I was very religious and very sheltered,” says Blue, no longer a practicing Jehovah’s Witness. “The whole time I’m thinking, ‘He’s amazing.”‘
Many women don’t respond well to bayou living – too many bugs, too much mud. Yet Blue thrived amid its charm.
“I don’t know,” says Rodriquez. “Something magical happened, and it just clicked. I tell her all the time, ‘Everything happens for a reason.”‘
Over the next year, Blue says, “at every turn, he took good care of my heart. At every turn I made, he said the right things. He did the right things.”
Marry: When Rodriquez had a heart attack and a stroke in April, Blue caught a glimpse of life without him. When Blue crashed her motorcycle right in front of him in July, Rodriquez got his chance to worry. So when he offered her a new motorcycle instead of an engagement ring, she took it.
The groom spent two weeks cooking the food for their bayou-style wedding – 25 gallons of gumbo, mounds of jambalaya, 45 pounds of shrimp, even squirrel on a stick. The 200 guests included the groom’s son Cisco, who is in Colorado after losing his home in Hurricane Katrina. Many of them roamed Evergreen Memorial Park before enjoying dinner, served by the couple themselves. Only after everyone had eaten did they change into their wedding clothes and conduct a short, raucous, self-solemnized wedding.
Getting right to the point, Rodriquez said simply, “I love you. You mean the world to me. I want you to be my wife, as you know, or you wouldn’t be here.”
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