The Downtown Alliance received 45 entries for their contest Lower Manhattan Love Story. On Monday Tara Clark and Matt Cooney were notified that their entry had been chosen as the winner by a special panel of judges.
Clark and Cooney received a dinner for two at the upscale Wall & Water restaurant, a one-night weekend stay at the Andaz Wall Street hotel and a $250 gift certificate to Greenwich Jewelers.
Entries came in from men and women, the young and old, straight and gay, neighborhood newcomers and former residents. Roughly one third of the entries focused on a love of the district while other stories described amenities, such as the waterfront views and the diverse dinning, the atmosphere, and romantic spots like the Battery Park Esplanade.
“We had an amazing response,” said Jeff Simmons, senior vice president for communications for the Alliance. “If there was a common theme threaded through most of the entries, it was that people have found love in the neighborhood, be it for a person or a place. It was moving to pore through these entries. People really put their hearts into them.”
A Lower Manhattan love story
BY Tara Clark and Matt Cooney
My fiancé, Matt Cooney, and I met in San Diego in February 2009 while out with friends for a night of dinner and drinks at a bar. He is a flight officer for FA-18 fighter jets for the Marine Corps and he was due to leave for Japan in two weeks to serve a six-month deployment. We decided to stay in touch while he was gone, and got to know each other better during that time through our emails, letters and phone calls. He even called me on my birthday (not knowing it) and made my birthday wish come true: to hear from him (which he didn’t know about at the time, either).
When he returned to San Diego in September 2009, we got together for our first date in Laguna Beach. Sparks flew, and we immediately started falling in love. He took me on my second date the next weekend to a U2 concert — my favorite band.
We were inseparable after that, even when we discovered a month into dating that Matt had been transferred to New York City. After three months of dating, we knew we wanted to spend the rest of our lives together and decided to move to New York together in March 2009 to pursue our dreams and further grow our love. I had to leave my friends, family, and job behind but knew as long as we were together we would be happy.
We decided to make our new home in the Financial District for several reasons. We loved the small neighborhood feeling we got when we walked down Stone Street and how quickly we made friends. The history of Lower Manhattan charmed us as well; we were charmed by how we uncovered historical spots every day. The easy access to Battery Park, running paths on the Hudson River, and running over the Brooklyn Bridge were appealing to us because we are admittedly running addicts. Most importantly, Matt felt compelled to live in the area where our country was so suddenly and heartlessly attacked because the events of 9/11 altered his remaining education at the Naval Academy and he dedicated himself to serve his country as an officer in the Marine Corps in a time of war. He felt his service was in rightful memory of those that were lost, and a reminder of what he works for each day… of which I supported him fully.
We built a new life with each other in Lower Manhattan over the next year and a half. One of our favorite things to do on Sundays was to take a walk together in Battery Park and talk about our future.
This last August, Matt suggested walking to one of our favorite restaurants, Gigino Wagner Park, for dinner. As we walked along our typical path, Matt completely surprised me and proposed to me!
Lower Manhattan means so much to us because the life that we built here together has further solidified the love we felt when we first met. We are getting married on August 18 — exactly one year from the date Matt proposed and we cannot wait for the next step in our lives in New York together.
