40 Years Ago Today, I Met Bill Tomoff!

You know I love milestone days/dates. Today is no different because I can't believe it's been 40 years since I first saw the one and only Bill Tomoff!

It all started when I saw a guy I didn’t recognize on the infield of the Rocky River HS (Ohio) track on April 13, 1985. In a weird way, I knew I wanted to meet and marry him, and it was instantaneous! Yeah, I'm one of those, and I’m not kidding about telling myself that he would be my forever guy, not even knowing if he had a girlfriend or a wife. It took the whole track meet from 9 am - 4 pm to figure out that every time he talked in “we,” it was his identical twin brother, Don! Phew!

We were at the track as officials for the Bonne Bell Relays, a fairly large spring track meet in Northeast Ohio. We both ran in it in high school (different years since Bill is older than me), and I even carried a record on that track in the 800 M dash for several years! Our good friend, Bill Gawne, was the RR Track Coach and recruited all his friends to help him run it for several years. I didn’t know Bill Gawne knew Bill Tomoff, and I thought I knew all of Bill Gawne’s friends at that time.

So, it was a surprise for me to stand next to handsome Bill Tomoff for the entire meet—he timed third place, and I timed fourth place. Timing the fourth-place finishers was the most difficult one since if they didn’t make it to the finals by place, they went home.

Not a week later, while playing tennis with my friend, Debbie Martinko, I blurted out that I would marry a guy I met over the past weekend. Back and forth several times with the tennis ball, we "argued" about that point. I said, "I am," then she hit the ball back over and said, “You’re not.” I’m sure she thought I was full of crazy talk…girls can do that at 23 years old. We still laugh about that day whenever the subject comes up.

Even though we met on this day 40 years ago, it was about 6 weeks later when we finally met again at the Cleveland, Ohio, Marathon & 10K in downtown Cleveland. As I remembered from our conversation on the official’s stand, Bill said he planned to run the 10K. I volunteered in the shoot when the top marathoners finished the race; I was there with others to take the top group into the Cleveland State University gym to pee in a cup to keep their amateur status.

After the top 10 (or was it the top 25?) finished the marathon and 10K races, my job at the finish line was done. I quickly left that area and was on the hunt to find Bill Tomoff in a crowd of thousands. Let’s not forget there was an identical twin brother I hadn’t met yet in the same crowd, and Don also ran the 10K.

Luckily, we found each other that day, and the rest, they say, is history!

Fast-forward to today, and with 40 years of being a couple under our belts as a team, we face the good, bad, and ugly of life together. Like many couples, we’ve experienced the tippy-top highs and the down-in-the-valley lows, yet we work on helping others and keeping a positive attitude about everything we do.

Our song from that time in 1985 and still today is REO Speedwagon’s Can’t Fight This Feeling.

Cheers to us on this milestone day!

bSoleille!

Terri

Photos: 1) June 1985; 2) Paris, France with our family; 3) May 2023 - Sauve, France (In The Cevennes).