VALENTINE'S Day is fast approaching, and so here are three stories about couples who are madly in love with a) each other and, b) their common life interest. Interested? Check them out. Indeed, couples who eat, work and play together, stay together.
For the love of food
It started with a cooking show—common ground that had Kate and Marco Anzani talking at a party. They were doing separate segments for that show at that time, and what began as a two-minute introduction bloomed into an animated exchange of food and their shared passion for it.
Marco was then an executive chef at Shangri-la's Mactan Resort and Spa, while Kate had just come home from a five-year stint in Australia where she did restaurant studies at the Le Cordon Bleu.
“It’s really chemistry, and both of us recognized it,” Kate recalls. “He was just here short term yet we realized we wanted to spend more time with each other, and the more we spent time together we realized we wanted a future together.”
Nine years and three kids later, Kate and Marco are now known as the couple behind restaurants Anzani and Gusto. Marco oversees operations while Kate helps out in marketing.
Such love for food, though, goes beyond their restos, as the couple loves dining out as well. “We enjoy going to our favorite restaurants,” Marco says, “and experiencing new food concepts when we travel. We even prepare a list of where we’re going to dine when in a new place.”
“For us it’s both personal and professional,” Kate adds. “We look for new food products, look into creating new ones—and we can go for hours talking about it. We bounce each other back.”
This Valentine’s Day, Kate and Marco share they’ll both be in Anzani celebrating while squeezing in “work” as they attend to patrons. Working on V-Day seems outrageous for others but for this couple, there just might be no better way than that: simply being with each other and fulfilling what they love most.