Flames burn bright 20 years later for couples who met during Olympics

When The Atlanta Journal-Constitution contacted Harvey Louie, an ACOG employee who maintains www.acog1996.com, an online database of Atlanta Olympic staffers, for names of couples who met and fell in love at the Olympics, it turned out he met his spouse while working for the games.

Louie was hired to manage and redesign all of the signage in the city for the games. He arrived in Atlanta in the spring of 1995 and met his wife, Nancy, in early 1996 one night at dinner. It was a meeting by chance. He was going to dinner with a friend, who invited Nancy to join them. Nancy, who was living in California, was in town for business (unrelated to the Olympics).

"It was very random," said Louie, who moved to Atlanta from Southern California for the job with ACOG . "Had I not been at the games, I would not have met her. It was weird because I was working 110 hours a week and had little downtime and I happen to meet a woman, we meet, lock eyes, sit together for dinner and then it went from there."

In 2001, they married. The couple now lives in San Mateo, Calif.

Here’s a look at two more couples who won out in the game of love.

‘A big guy … but he’s cute’

In early 1994, Catherine Sabonis started working for the Atlanta Committee for the Olympic Games as a logistics manager, coordinating furniture, fixture, equipment and supply needs for 100-plus sites.

A few months before the Olympic Games, she needed to hire warehouse managers. She received by fax a resume from Gavin Bradley, who immediately impressed her — a former Marine, a University of Chicago graduate, rugby player, working for a logistics company.

“This looks like a date,” she joked when she first read the resume.

Sabonis hired Bradley. It was not love at first sight, she said, but instead their affection for each other developed over time.

“He is a big guy, over 6 feet 6 inches tall, and I was not used to seeing guys that big,” she said. “But he’s cute.”

They worked long days and grew closer.

"It's such a unique type of job," said Bradley. "It's time-limited, high pressure, high expectations, you are putting in 16, 18 hours a day as the games approach. It culminates with this big thing and then it just shuts down. I think we found that we worked well together and that compatibility carried over into our relationship."

They tied the knot in 1998 and settled in Atlanta. They have three children, now 16, 14 and 11. Bradley is the director of college counseling at Pace Academy, and Sabonis, now Sabonis-Bradley, works in communications for Coca-Cola.

They are now both 48.

“I think the Olympics set the framework for the rest of my life,” said Sabonis-Bradley.

‘Best thing to come out of the games’

Courtney and Don “Bunch” Hendrix already shared common interests when they found themselves working together, sharing a cubicle wall, several months before the 1996 Olympic Games.

They were both passionate about sports, trying new things. They played for the company softball team.

"I just really liked him as a colleague and I remember on Monday mornings thinking, 'Great, there's that guy.' I thought he was fun and nice, and with Bunch, he is so intelligent but in a soft-spoken way," said Courtney, who moved to Atlanta from Orlando for a job with the Olympic Games.

Working in the same department, Courtney and Bunch, who moved to Atlanta from Cleveland, sold specialty packages and corporate suites called “Patron Packages” selling for as much as $50,000 apiece to large corporations.

Within a couple of months, they started dating. They got married in 1998. They now have three children: 14, 11 and 7. They live in the Oak Grove neighborhood of DeKalb County. Bunch works in pharmaceutical sales. Courtney works part time for World Heritage, an international student exchange program.

Courtney, now 49, said, “Bunch and I have common memories because of what we did together. We had real cool opportunities seeing the White House advance team in action, and they were wonderful and charming and unassuming. And we were in a suite next to Muhammad Ali and he was the one for me, made adults do really crazy things like climbing all over to get to him.”

Together, Courtney and Bunch were featured in a Home Depot commercial for the Olympics commemorative brick program. Courtney dressed up as the Olympics mascot Izzy a few times.

Wonderful memories, of course. But when Bunch, now 47, reflects on the games, love rises to the top.

“Courtney was the best thing to come out of the games. It started out as a way to advance your career as a mid-20-year-old, and look good on a resume, but beyond that, it changes your whole life and you get to meet your wife, have three kids.”