Jeff Taylor vividly recalls the morning commute that changed his life forever.
“It was a few weeks after Sept. 11,” said Taylor, a resident of Guttenberg. “I was taking my early morning NY Waterway ferry [to Manhattan], when I noticed a new commuter. I was living in North Bergen at the time and she was living in Guttenberg. I noticed her standing in line, and I knew right away that I had to find a way to introduce myself. I just had to do something.”
So Taylor came up with the brilliant idea to ask her if her name was Caroline.
“I knew her name wasn’t Caroline, but I had to know her name,” said Taylor, who is an advertising executive for two major television networks. “It was the only thing I could think of.”
The pretty woman knew it was a lame pick-up line, but was interested all the same.
“Honestly, my thoughts were elsewhere that day,” said Lisa Taylor. “As he approached me, I was preoccupied. I had recognized him from the ferry. I knew he was a fellow ferry commuter. I was familiar with his face. I knew he was interested in me. He made sure to repeat his name a few times.”
“We struck up a conversation,” Jeff Taylor said. “She told me her name was Lisa. She told me that she had just moved here from Westchester County. I gave her my business card and told her to call me.”
But there wasn’t instant chemistry.
“I said, ‘OK,’ and put the card in my pocket,” Lisa said. “But I wasn’t going to call right away.”
A few weeks went by. Jeff went out of his way to look for Lisa on the way to work.
“I used to take the bus on Boulevard East, and when we got to where Lisa lived, I would look out the window and look for her,” Jeff said.
“It’s funny, because I’m such an erratic commuter,” Lisa said. “I would leave my home at 8 a.m. one day, 8:30 the next, so if he was looking for me, he must have done some waiting around.”
Finally, there was a day when the two met on the bus on the way to the NY Waterway ferry.
“I was so happy to see her one morning,” Jeff said. “I asked her to take a seat next to me, and we talked all the way into Manhattan.”
“He was a very nice person,” Lisa said. “By the second time we spoke, I knew that he was someone I was going to get to know.”
In fact, by the second time they met, Lisa had given Jeff a nickname that she used with the people she worked with in the clothing apparel industry. He was known as “the ferry guy.”
The two kept in touch with each other via e-mails and phone calls. A persistent Jeff kept asking Lisa to go out on a date.
“But there were things going on,” Lisa said. “It was the holiday season, Thanksgiving, then Christmas. I did speak to him via an e-mail and said, ‘Happy New Year,’ and when he asked when I was free, I said ‘January 17.'”
“I held her to that date,” Jeff said. “Of course, we went to the Chart House [Restaurant in Weehawken], because it was so close to the ferry.”
Love blossomed throughout 2002.
“We dated all summer,” Jeff said.
“It was meant to be,” Lisa said. “I waited all of my life and found the man of my dreams on the ferry.”
The two drew closer and closer over the summer of 2002. Later that year, Jeff met Lisa’s parents and asked Lisa’s dad for permission to marry her.
“My father knew I was going to get married before I did,” Lisa said. “That’s just the way Jeff is.”
The couple was in a Caribbean casino on Dec. 8, 2002, which happened to be Jeff’s birthday.
“We were on a winning streak that day,” Jeffery said. “So I slipped the ring inside the bucket with all the coins, wrapped in a tissue.”
“It was a whirlwind,” Lisa said. “It’s the last thing I could have expected, seeing that shiny ring in that bucket. In everything he does, he still leaves me speechless.”
Jeff and Lisa Taylor were married Oct. 19, 2003, capping the commuter romance fueled by the NY Waterway ferry.
So when Jeff Taylor received an e-mail from NY Waterway recently, as part of a Valentine’s Day promotion looking for commuters who might have had a romantic tale to tell about meeting there, Taylor wrote an essay about his romance with his wife.
“I figured I might as well try,” Jeff said.
“He did that totally on his own,” Lisa said. “He basically submitted our story and didn’t even tell me until we won.”
Sure enough, the people running the NY Waterway contest selected the Taylors as one of the most romantic couples. As the winners, they were presented with a month of free commutes – “That’s good for the both of us,” Jeff Taylor said – as well as dinner for two at Arthur’s Landing Restaurant in Weehawken.
The Taylors received their prize at a ceremony last Friday, a day before Valentine’s Day, in front of members of the media.
“That’s going to be hard to top,” Jeff Taylor said. “This is our first married Valentine’s Day. I’m going to have to start to work on next year’s as we speak.”
Lisa Taylor said that she expects her husband to do something even more involved next year.
“I’m anticipating something on an even grander scale,” Lisa Taylor said. “He’s always doing something to top himself.”
But there’s one thing he’ll never top – that ridiculous opening line that eventually gained him a wife.
“Hey, I can’t try it again,” Jeff Taylor said. “It’s over. I always used to joke that I could whip my business card out in a flash. I’m a salesman, so I have to work fast. In a ferry ride, you only get six minutes.”