Heartfelt meetings, devotion keep steady beat

Canines play dog-gone good matchmakers, and many songs provide great walks down memory lane – each helping make this Valerntine’s Day special for two Grand Strand couples.

Noah: Meet Gonzo; Nick: Meet Amanda

Nick Mateo, a retired sergeant after 10 years in the Army and four deployments in the war on terror, had not foreseen his trained service dog, Noah, carrying any duty that would lead to a date.

Nor had Amanda Coy, the local marketing and sales manager for Medieval Times Dinner & Tournament, expected her “old man” pooch, Gonzo, to play a role in spurring her link of a lifetime – not when she had just moved from Texas, thinking her corporate employer had made this a temporary assignment.

Mateo said that while on a stroll with Noah – a gift from Freedom Fidos (www.freedomfidos.org), to help him with his everyday living amid recovery from combat injuries and post traumatic stress disorder – near Myrtle Beach’s Valor Memorial Garden, an encounter ensued with Coy and Gonzo at a street corner.

He recalled asking simply, “You live around here?” and learning she was in town for a work commitment, a conversation resulted, because neither party had seen the other previously.

“I wasn’t trying to pick her up,” Mateo said, “ but it kind of worked out that way.”

Coy said the dogs helped, most of all by easing the comfort of this chance meeting. Mateo, walking Noah from his wheelchair, “was too shy to ask me out,” she said, but after the pairs each went their own way around the corner, “he sent me a text message, to ask me out.”

Meeting up again that night, to dine nearby at P.F. Chang’s, Coy saw Mateo show up with only a cane, and he wondered if she’d react with, “It’s a miracle!”

Coy said seeing Mateo manage without his wheelchair was “definitely the last thing I expected,” but he explained how with some flexibility, his injuries were not severe enough to prompt a wheelchair need for all mobility matters, and for this formal first date, he was steady on his own legs and two feet.

Dinner at P.F. Chang’s remains an anniversary tradition every month, and they have shared in visiting new turf through traveling and a shared appreciation of history. Mateo said they just returned from a wounded warriors’ adaptive ski weekend in Virginia. He credits Coy for helping “open up my confidence” and be more sociable.

A newcomer to the East Coast, Coy has liked Mateo’s lead on exploring forts and other sites, including veterans’ assistance efforts and “seeing the other side of it” with career paths and choices so many individuals could make after military service, especially in overcoming disabilities.

Coy brought up a “beautiful, romantic weekend” at Patriots Point in Mount Pleasant, with seeing Independence Day fireworks from the deck of the USS Yorktown carrier museum.

Mateo, who enlisted in the Army at age 17, said, until this year, “I never really had something to celebrate for Valentine’s Day.”

Coy, who sang professionally in Texas, likes their mutual joy of joking around, which coupled with their love of music, only makes them what Mateo calls “seamless.”

Mateo plays the piano at 5 p.m. Sunday Masses geared to youth at St. Andrew Catholic Church in Myrtle Beach.

For playing a “pivotal role and foundation” in his childhood, Mateo saluted his grandmother – now 81 and always happy for an occasional karaoke night with the couple – whom he said took an instant liking to Coy. He also noted the coincidence of a link from his kind grandfather’s passing from July 26, 1985 – four hours before Coy’s birth.

Coy pointed out how Noah was a rescue dog who has made a difference in her life, too, and that both pooches got along from the get-go. Mateo said with a cat in the mix, the pets already are all family.

Always on his mind, always in his care

Ray Maggio said since he and Donna Maggio tied the knot in 1972, music has remained a key ingredient in making memories.

When the former accompanied his better half to a medical appointment two weeks ago, the doctor started a trivia exercise, uttering the first phrase from a signature Elvis Presley hit, “You ain’t nothing but a ...”

“She said,” Ray Maggio recalled, “’hound dog,’ and it just floored us all.”

“She remembers songs or music much better,” he said, “than just being able to talk if I start something to chat about.”

Ray Maggio said his wife was diagnosed a few years ago at age 62 with early onset Alzheimer’s disease, a lady he said always was sharp in mind and memory, for so long since graduating “fourth in her entire graduation class” in college.

He treasures music “as a thing that ties us together,” and they still go out so see shows, with favorites such as “Chicago” by Theatre of the Republic in Conway, “Sorry, Wrong Chimney” by Stage Left Theatre Company in Myrtle Beach, and other productions at Coastal Carolina University and Carolina Forest High School, near their home.

On a brief break from the honor he fulfills a husband and full-time caretaker, Ray Maggio shared these memories while waiting at a cinema with a son to see “Star Wars: Episode VII – The Force Awakens” on Tuesday afternoon.

Maggio said he met Donna in their college cafeteria, and they arranged a first outing, skiing, which she never had tried, so she brought along a friend.

Later, from living in Williston, Vt., where both Maggio sons – Matthew and Luke – were born, and where the family took in plenty of skiing and hiking in the Green Mountains, the patriarch laughed at one reality his wife introduced to the boys, an accidental moment defined by cursing.

As she drove the youngsters in the car, a bicyclist had cut Donna Maggio off at a turn, and she let loose “with a few choice words,” Ray Maggio said, “and kids being kids, they picked up on them.”

“Even now, we joke about this,” he said.

Dealing with “the constant, protracted downward spiral” that Alzheimer’s impacts on one’s memory, Maggio realizes that “life always throws you those curve balls,” and that anywhere he and Donna “can get out and do a little bit of laughing,” even shopping errands twice a week, it helps both of them.

He cited an adage for whom he does not know the author, but he swears by it: “If you want to see God laugh, then make plans.”

Having stayed active, also with bicycling “rails to trails” paths during their tenure in Pennsylvania, the family members keep stepping ahead with the Alzheimer’s Association S.C. Chapter’s annual Myrtle Beach Walk to End Alzheimer’s (843-213-1516 or www.alz.org/sc), nearly halfway into a decade of sponsoring a team, Mommy Donna’s Alzheimer’s Walk Team.

“It’s been mainly Donna, Matt, Luke, Bailey – our golden retriever – and myself,” Maggio said. “The team name comes from the boys: That’s what they called her when they were little.”

Being his wife’s MVP and caregiver, Maggio said when she weeps, such as during helping her with everyday necessities she cannot do herself, it “rips my heart apart,” but he quoted another famous saying that shines light on his heart, on any day, including Valentine’s:

“The things you do for yourself die with you, but the things you do for others live on forever.”

This story was originally published February 13, 2016 at 12:00 AM with the headline "Heartfelt meetings, devotion keep steady beat."