David Porter says he knew better than to post the photo of him and Kontji Anthony together at a Grizzlies game on Facebook under the heading, “The love of my life.”

“People started calling from everywhere,” he said. “Not just Memphis, all around the world.”

They were the stunning new celebrity couple of Memphis. The award-winning anchor at WMC Action 5 News and the legendary record producer, songwriter, singer, entrepreneur and philanthropist. And they were Facebook official. It created a stir. 

“I knew darn well I shouldn’t have posted it,” he said. “I’m David Porter and I just put the love of my life out there. But, I have to tell you, this has been a beautiful experience.”

The pandemic may have put a stop to travel, to concerts, to packed football stadiums and to handshakes. But it has not put a stop to love.

So for this Valentine’s Day, I offer you seven love stories. About Porter and Anthony. About two young Memphians who met on a dating app. About a wedding that was postponed and another that went off on time. About a couple that was tested in ways much harder than drive-thru. About a man who fixed broken hearts. And about a husband and wife who worked with COVID patients — and who didn’t think one of them would live to see this Valentine’s Day. 

‘Stupid Good’

That’s how Porter describes his chemistry with Anthony.

“It’s stupid good,” he said.

At first, Porter declined to talk about his new romance. But after Anthony approved, he called me back.

“I’ve seen and known Kontji for years, since she’s been in Memphis,” he said. “I just had great, great, great, great respect for her, to be honest.”

In September, Anthony arranged to interview Porter for a story on his career.

“They had a film crew and they came to my home,” Porter said. “We were talking and, being honest, we both are single, and I’m just looking at her, and she’s interviewing me, and I’m thinking, ‘Oh my goodness, she’s so smart.’ She has everything a smart man would want in a woman. It was so obvious. I was trying to figure out whether I would say anything and, consequently, I didn’t say anything. It was all respect.”

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So that was that. Until Anthony reached out again because she needed more photos for the television piece.

“I had pictures in storage and I told her she could come over and pick the ones she wanted,” Porter said. “And we started talking, and I asked her about her life, and it struck me that I could talk to her for hours and hours and not be bored. After all this, I found a way to ask her, in essence, if I could talk to her on another level. And she said that if there was going to be any talking like that, I would have to do it because she wasn’t going to initiate it. She found out rather quickly that was all I needed.”

The two started dating. And they finally decided to use a photo from the Grizzlies game to tell the broader world.

“It’s been incredible,” Porter said. “To find someone who has all these qualities, and is one of the most beautiful women I’ve ever seen? It just doesn’t happen. I’m an experienced guy and it just doesn’t happen. This is one of the most beautiful experiences of my life.”

‘How do you hold hands?’

When the pandemic began, Rebekah Park decided to join a dating app.

And if that seems strange on the surface, the underlying logic makes sense.

“I really wasn’t a fan of dating apps,” said Park, 26. “I was the type of person who would get on an app and delete it. But once the pandemic started, there was no other way to meet guys.”

So she fired up something called Coffee Meets Bagel. A week later, she matched with Jonathan Spagnoli, a medical student.

“After chatting, we decided to have a Zoom date,” she said. “But he said, to make it more like a real date, he wanted to get me something from Uber Eats.”

Spagnoli ordered from Chipotle. Park ordered spaghetti and fries from Corky’s.

“I took one bite of it, then, looking at myself on Zoom, I realized my order was a horrible idea,” she said.

They had another date anyway, this time a real one, at Shelby Farms.

“We said we can socially distance, go for a walk,” she said. “We were there for six hours.”

OK, but what happens next in a pandemic? How about the cuddling and stuff?

“Here’s the thing, I had never had a boyfriend and I’m not a touchy person at all,” Park said. “I think it was before our third date, I said to Jonathan, ‘I don’t even know how to hold hands with someone. How long do you hold hands before you let go? Am I going to hurt your feelings if I let go?’ I finally told him that I’d hold hands with him, but I wanted him to ask me first.”

The next date happened to be on April 25. They watched the movie, “Miss Congeniality,” in which Miss Rhode Island — asked her definition of a perfect date — responds: “I’d have to say April 25th. Because it’s not too hot, not too cold.”

They were sitting on the couch, watching the movie, when Spagnoli popped the question. No, not that question. Let’s not get ahead of ourselves.

“He leaned over and said, ‘Can I hold your hand?’ ” Park said. “I said, ‘Yes, Jonathan.’ ”

After that, they did lots of stuff. Drive-in movies. Cooking at home. Walks by the river. 

I actually heard from a fair number of couples who started dating during the pandemic. And all of them said it had accelerated their relationship in a certain way.

“We effectively became a part of each other’s bubbles,” said Sean Denby, who started dating his girlfriend, Katie Elms, just before the pandemic began. “At one point, we went through a two-week quarantine together. It feels like we’ve been dating longer, just because time has been so weird.”

So it was that on Jan. 9, Spagnoli asked Park to go on another date to Shelby Farms.

“We went to the same place we went on our first date,” Park said. “This time, he had blankets set out, and white twinkling lights, and he had posted photos of us, on the trees, all along the way, with messages on the back about his memories of our dates.”

Spagnoli got down one one knee and popped that other question. A photographer stepped out from behind a tree to capture it all. And this time, Park agreed to take Spagnoli’s hand, and to never, ever let go.

A wedding postponed

When you are 81 and 82, on the verge of getting married, is it hard to postpone a wedding a full year?

That’s what I asked Patty Calvert, 81, who was all set to marry Sam Beach, 82, on June 25 of 2020.

“We had been friends forever, as couples, when he was married to Ann and I was married to Dennis,” Calvert said. 

Dennis Calvert died in 2016, just before the couple planned to move to Trezevant Manor. They had an apartment picked out and everything.

“I decided to come on and move,” Calvert said. “When Ann died, about four months later, Sam came over to look at Trezevant. That’s how we ended up in the same place.”

They eventually started dating. A romance between floors.

“I have my own apartment on the 10th floor and he has his own apartment on the fifth floor,” Calvert said. “I have a dog he calls ‘Not My Dog.’ We get together for lunch and dinner. It works out pretty well.”

“After we marry, we are both keeping our apartments. We both like our space.”

Patty Calvert
Fiancée of Sam Beach

So well, they decided to get married. Beach proposed by taking the elevator up.

“He dressed up in a tuxedo, he came to my apartment and he got down on one knee,” Calvert said. “We planned a wedding for Highland, North Carolina. We invited about 100 people. Then we had to tell everybody, ‘Oops, we can’t do that.’ ”

It’s one thing for 20-somethings to postpone the start of their lives together. But don’t 80-somethings have more at stake?

“It wasn’t at all hard because Sam and I are together so much anyway,” Calvert said. “We feel so blessed and lucky to have each other.”

Now the wedding has been rescheduled for this summer, with a somewhat smaller crowd. 

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“After we marry, we are both keeping our apartments,” Calvert said. “We both like our space.”

But they’ll get together today to celebrate Valentine’s Day. Calvert is pretty excited about her gift.

“I got him a Comfy, which is a soft blanket that you wear,” she said. “I’m getting him one in brown. I already have one in pink.”

Get them to the church on time

Ernie Freeman, the anchor of “Good Morning Memphis” on FOX 13, nearly gave up on Kim Middleton before their first date.

“She was really late,” he said. “I was close to just leaving and calling it a day because I don’t do the late thing.”

This was years ago. So many years ago, the two were supposed to meet at Macaroni Grill, which is long gone.

“As a matter of fact, we had another date, we were going to go to a casino in Tunica, and this time, when she was late, I just headed to Tunica on my own,” Freeman said. “And that was the last time she was ever late.”

So maybe it isn’t a surprise that Freeman and Middleton went ahead with their wedding despite the pandemic. They were married on Oct. 17 at The Manor at Carahills.

“We had a smaller wedding than we planned on having, and mask wearing was required,” Freeman said. “My one condition of having the wedding was that, you guessed it, I wanted the actual wedding to start on time.”

So at 11 a.m. sharp, the wedding commenced. Marital bliss should not be kept waiting.

But as for the honeymoon?

“We’ll have to do that later,” Freeman said. “We haven’t left Shelby County since this thing began.”

Tested beyond imagining

Sonia and Willie Leonard spent much of 2020 scrambling to create an efficient, effective drive-thru testing center at Church Health. And that wasn’t anywhere near the hardest part of their year.

“Last year was a horrible year,” Sonia said. “I can’t really begin to describe it. But we did great. And now we are looking forward to new possibilities.”

Sonia and Willie Leonard, both 40, actually met at Church Health nine years ago. They married three years later. Their jobs don’t normally intersect.

“But this year, with the need for testing, everybody had to pivot our jobs,” Sonia said. “Willie did more of the setting up of the equipment, making sure everyone had what they needed. I was the one who kind of put it all together.”

It was a stressful time, by any measure. Trying to get control of a pandemic by creating a testing center out of thin air. When they were at work, the Leonards were intently focused on testing. When they were at home, they were there, too.

“We went to Walmart and Home Depot to see if they had the kind of tents we needed,” Sonia said. “If we weren’t sleeping, we were talking about it. And then, on top of that, we experienced two lost pregnancies, in May and July. It was a really hard year.”

I actually didn’t know this part of the Leonards’ story when I called them. I just knew of the couple’s heroic work to keep us safe. So as Sonia told me the heart-wrenching details, it was hard not to wonder how the couple held up under it all.

They have been trying to have children for years. Sonia lost one of her fallopian tubes when she had an ectopic pregnancy in 2014. 

“In May, when I had the miscarriage, I had to go through that myself, because my husband wasn’t allowed to be there because of COVID,” Sonia said. “The second one, I nearly lost my life. I just felt some pains at work one day. I told Willie, you need to take me to the hospital. They discovered I had internal bleeding in my abdomen. They rushed me into emergency surgery.”

Sonia had suffered another ectopic pregnancy. As part of the effort to save her life, her other fallopian tube was removed.

“It was touch-and-go,” she said. “Now I cannot have children except by in vitro fertilization (IVF). But we are still hopeful. We’ve gotten involved in Tennessee Fertility Advocates, trying to get it mandated that insurance has to cover IVF.”

Sonia sounded both strikingly upbeat and determined as she talked about all of this. It was remarkable — and humbling — to hear. And it was a pointed reminder that love isn’t all flowers and church bells, that it will invariably be tested by hard times.

“When I woke up from surgery, and I heard what happened, I knew I was still here for a reason,” Sonia said. “For us, as a couple, it is to serve. My husband and I serve every day at work. It’s not just a paycheck for us. And now my husband and I have a new purpose in advocating for fertility benefits.

“It was a terrible year, but we came out stronger as a couple. We are still hoping to have children. And we know for certain we can get through some stuff.”

He fixed broken hearts

Yaimara Hernandez wrote everyone she could think of to save her 3-year-old child.

She wrote to children’s hospitals in Boston, Baltimore, Atlanta and Miami. They all said no.

Hernandez’s son, Manolito, needed heart surgery that wasn’t available in Cuba, where they lived. The politics were too complicated. The relationship between the United States and Cuba was too fraught. 

But finally, Hernandez wrote Bret Rodriguez, president of the Memphis-based International Children’s Heart Foundation. And a small miracle ensued. In 2016, Manolito became the first Cuban child since the country’s revolution in the 1950s to come to the United States for cardiovascular surgery. The operation took place at Le Bonheur Children’s Hospital. 

So this Valentine’s story isn’t about a romance, per se. It’s about a man who fixed broken hearts. Rodriguez wasn’t a doctor. But he joined the board of the International Children’s Heart Foundation in 2001, became president of the board in 2009 and poured himself into the work of saving children around the world until he died of COVID-19 on Feb. 1 at the age of 61.

“He had no health issues, zero,” said Lisa Rodriguez, Bret’s wife. “He tried to manage his symptoms at home, but on Dec. 20 he texted me — we were quarantining from each other — and said he thought he should go to the hospital. Honestly, we thought he would just be there a few days and would be fine.”

Bret Rodriguez kept working on behalf of the foundation from the hospital. 

“When he was in a regular room, he would ask me to bring in another phone charger,” Lisa Rodriguez said. “The nurses were frustrated by it. They kept saying he needs to rest.”

Rodriguez was ultimately transferred to an ICU. He was put on a ventilator. You know the rest. But the whole time her husband was in the hospital, Lisa Rodriguez was getting texts from Yaimara Hernandez.

“She wanted to know how he was doing,” Lisa Rodriguez said. “She would text me multiple times a day. She’s devastated. Everyone is devastated.”

Bret Rodriguez leaves behind three children, ages 21, 18 and 11. And he leaves behind more than 7,000 other children across the globe — including Manolito, now 8 — who benefited from his life and work. 

The sweetest Valentine’s of them all

They met at Jim Keras Chevrolet, back before it moved. He worked in parts, she worked as a cashier to pay for nursing school.

“The first day I met him, I called my best friend and said, ‘I met the man I’m going to marry and he is such a dork,’ ” said Heather Greenland. 

The dork in question was Wes Greenland, who wasn’t immediately hip to Heather’s plan. 

“I spent the next three years begging him to marry me,” Heather said.

Finally, he did. 

Indeed, he didn’t just marry Heather; he followed her into nursing.

“She convinced me to do it,” Wes said. “Now I wish I had done it years before.”

The two both were working at Baptist Memorial Hospital-Memphis when COVID struck. Heather was a manager in the emergency room, Wes as a manager of a COVID ward.

“It was intense,” Wes said. “With all the restrictions, with the patients not being allowed to see family, you’re the only human contact they have, you become their family, in a way.”

Months passed. The number of patients climbed. And the day after Thanksgiving, Wes started feeling bad.

“I got tested, it was negative,” he said. “I got tested again, it was negative. But that Friday, I got to feeling so bad, I had to go to the ER. They admitted me right then. I had a rapid test and was positive.”

Wes would not be discharged until Jan. 25.

“It got real bad,” Heather said. “On Dec. 7, the night nurse called me and said they were going to take him to the ICU. That afternoon, they said it was getting worse and they were going to have to intubate him. Well, when you intubate, we as nurses know there’s a good chance he’s not going to make it. The night they intubated him, I thought I was going to end up burying him. I told my children there was a good chance Daddy might not make it through this, and we would have to pray all day, every day. And that’s what we did.”

Wes received a last-resort treatment called ECMO, in which his blood was drawn out of his body and oxygenated before being returned.

“That probably saved his life,” Heather said. “But when he was getting it, he was bleeding so much, from so many different places, and they were having to give him so much blood, I thought there was no way he was making it through.”

Somehow, he survived. Maybe it was all those prayers. And on Jan. 25, the doctors, nurses and other staffers at Baptist Memorial Hospital-Memphis lined the halls to applaud as Heather wheeled her husband to the car to take him home.

“Honestly, it was a little embarrassing, because I’m not a big center-of-attention guy,” Wes said. “But at the same time, it was great, seeing everyone there, all my friends.”

Wes still has a fair ways to go until he’s completely healthy. He had to teach himself to walk again.

“But I’ve been a Tampa Bay Buccaneers fan for more than 25 years,” he said. “I got to be home to watch them win the Super Bowl.”

And he gets to hug his kids. That’s the main thing. To hug Giuliana, Drew and Jace.

“I hadn’t hugged them since Thanksgiving,” he said. “I can’t tell you how good it feels.”

As for Valentine’s Day, Wes and Heather don’t have big plans. They usually take the kids out for Mexican. They like Casa Mexicana because it serves Coke.

“It won’t be anything fancy,” Heather said. “But it will be really sweet.”