How we met: ‘It was like love at first sight’
For Lisa, the 1980s were an incredibly fun decade. Living in Brooklyn and working as a financial headhunter, she moved into an apartment building with lots of other people her age. “There were 25 apartments in total and a rooftop where we’d go for parties,” she says. “It was like living in the cast of Friends. Everyone knew each other and we were always in and out of each other’s homes.”
In the autumn of 1984, one of her neighbours invited her to his family home in New Jersey for Rosh Hashanah, a Jewish new year celebration. As soon as she arrived, she was introduced to his sister, Andrea, a market researcher who also lived in New York. For both of them, the friendship was like “love at first sight”, and they instantly bonded.
“I thought Lisa seemed really fun to hang out with and I was impressed that she had done so much travelling,” says Andrea. “She seemed as if she knew what she was doing in life.” Lisa felt like Andrea was the worldly one, because she was a “real ballsy New Yorker”.
After spending the week together, they went to a party in Lisa’s building. “That’s where I was introduced to Fred, who later became my husband,” says Andrea.
For the rest of the year, they spent most of their free time together, going to parties and out clubbing. “The cost of living was a lot less and we had very few responsibilities, which meant lots of time for fun,” says Lisa. “We’d also cook and eat dinner together, talking about any challenges we might be having with work or family.”
At the end of 1984, Andrea’s roommate moved out and she needed to find a new place to live. “One of Lisa’s neighbours was moving too, so on New Year’s Eve I moved into her building and we became inseparable,” she says. “We’d share clothes and had all the same friends.” They also went travelling together, to Mardi Gras in New Orleans and Cancún in Mexico.
In 1987, Lisa started working in human resources at a bank and got married. “Andrea was maid of honour at the wedding in Mississippi,” says Lisa. Although the relationship didn’t work out, Andrea supported her throughout.
Two years later, Lisa got the opportunity to work in London. “I was really sad,” says Andrea, “because I’d just got engaged and had hoped she would be around for all the wedding stuff. After she moved, we would write letters and visit each other when we could.”
Although Lisa found London challenging at first, she soon fell in love with the city. “It felt like home,” she says. “I did feel guilty about leaving Andrea but I knew she had Fred.” Since then, Lisa has travelled the world, working for banks in Bucharest, Hong Kong, Zurich and Frankfurt, before retiring in 2022 and settling back in the UK. Andrea continued her career in market research and lives in Brooklyn.
Despite the distance, Lisa and Andrea have always maintained a close friendship and, when Andrea turned 40, she came to London to celebrate. “We acted as if we were in our 20s. We had a party and a spa day; it was an amazing long weekend,” she says.
Andrea has two children, born in 1995 and 1998, while Lisa remarried in 1996, and had a daughter two years later. “Before smartphones, we didn’t talk all the time. We were so busy working and having young families, as well as living on different continents,” says Andrea. “But when we did, it would always feel as if it was just yesterday that we last spoke.”
They now FaceTime regularly and Lisa recently went to New York for Andrea’s son’s wedding. “I felt honoured to sit at the table with her family, who were my adopted family in New York.”
Andrea loves Lisa’s honesty and insights. “She gives me good advice and she’s my confidante,” she says. “I always say: ‘I wish I had her confidence.’”
Lisa appreciates her friend’s sense of humour and generosity. “I love that this friendship has been going for 40 years and has always been a pleasure. I can’t imagine her not being a part of my life.”
