30 years ago today, my Australian dad met my American mom at the 1996 Olympics
30 years ago, an Australian man came to Atlanta for the World of Coca-Cola and the Olympics. He stayed for a girl manning a Vidalia onion exhibit.
Heather Hardy grew up showing sheep and cattle 60 miles east of Atlanta in Madison, Georgia (population: 3,500ish in 1996). She was crowned “Georgia Cattleman’s Queen” in 1993.
Heather was a junior at UGA when she worked for Georgia Agriculture ‘96, showcasing Georgia agriculture on the Olympic stage.
“Tell me about your onions,” said Steve Leo, whose Aussie accent compensated for a less-than-impressive pickup line.
However, the line worked and sparked a two-hour conversation on Aug. 4, 1996 at Centennial Olympic Park.
That conversation is my origin story. The tale of how my parents, who were married three years later, met.
“I missed the closing ceremony completely,” Steve said. “I didn’t see any of that.”
My dad found himself in the park the same way he had traveled the country for the past four weeks — “planes, trains and automobiles.”
He had already created lifelong memories from sea to shining sea. He was amazed by nachos, disappointed by Dr Pepper and enamored with Golden Corral.
American parks — both national and amusement — lived up to his star-spangled expectations. He stumbled across Chuck Norris filming “Walker, Texas Ranger” in Dallas and Wesley Snipes filming “Murder at 1600” in Washington, D.C.
Before Atlanta, Steve first tried Waffle House in Daytona, Florida. The former health inspector had seen, well, … cleaner establishments.
“I remember thinking, ‘This is a great people-watching place,’” he said.
As Steve recounted his travels from the Golden Gate to Graceland, Heather asked if he wanted to see anything else.
“I had seen all these big cities and this cool stuff that I wanted to do, but I hadn’t seen any small towns,” he said. “In my mind, I had this picture of this white picket fence with a little house with a porch on the front of it with some rocking chairs.
“Some old guy’s sitting there with a plaid shirt on and some overalls, and he’d just be whittling.”
Heather stretched the truth — she couldn’t promise a whittling man — but she offered a visit to her hometown, and Steve accepted.
That evening, Heather dismantled the exhibit for hours. She was so exhausted she didn’t remember placing a call to Steve, arranging to meet at the Decatur MARTA station at 3 p.m.
Her friend overheard the call, woke her up and insisted that she should drive to the station.
Steve also nearly missed the meeting for the most Atlanta reason possible. MARTA buses delayed his arrival by 45 minutes, and in those pre-cellphone days, he couldn’t warn her he was late.
“By 3:45, I was like, ‘This is not going to happen. He’s not coming, and this has been a joke,’” Heather said. “So I’m walking out of the Decatur MARTA station, and my car was parked on the street right outside the station.
“I had my hand on the door handle, and I was getting in my car, and I heard, ‘Heathah! Heathah!’”
My parents’ first date started with a ride down Interstate-20 to Madison. Steve saw his white picket fences and rocking chairs. He also met my grandparents, Patrick and Patricia Hardy, lifelong Morgan County farmers.
“We liked him,” Patrick Hardy said. “I just couldn’t understand nothing he said.”
After a tour of the farm, Heather and Steve ate dinner with my grandmother, Raynor Cathey, who prepared fried chicken, fried okra and biscuits.
“It was the first home-cooked meal I’d had in four weeks,” Steve said.
He tried to eat the chicken with silverware, bless his heart.
Heather took Steve back to Atlanta that night, and they parted ways. Steve spent a week in D.C. and New York before flying home to Brisbane, Australia.
Already waiting on his bed were four letters from Georgia.
“I remember him coming in, and he had this big bottle of peach juice,” said Steve’s mother, Beryl Leo. “I said, ‘What’s that bottle of juice?’ He said, ‘Oh, some girl in Atlanta gave me that.’
“I said, ‘That’s a funny thing to give you,’ and he had carted it all the way around with him until he came home.”
Steve and Heather dated across the Pacific Ocean for two years. Heather’s first trip to Australia included a failed Vegemite tasting and a visit to Steve Irwin’s zoo before his rise to fame.
In quintessential 90s fashion, they also made mixtapes. Heather sent “The Devil Went Down to Georgia,” “Georgia on My Mind” and “Southland in the Springtime.” Steve sent back Aussie rock.
They burned through hundreds of calling cards before email innovated communication. Fittingly, on the night he proposed, Steve took Heather to watch “You’ve Got Mail.”
Then, he took her back to Centennial Olympic Park to pop the question.
Despite over 9,000 miles of distance, my parents married on June 5, 1999. They have lived in metro Atlanta ever since.
“One of the hardest things has obviously been that half of our family is across the world,” Heather said. “(Steve) specifically, but both of us have missed out. The upside to it is when we’re together, we’re together for long periods of time.”
Last year, I introduced my wife, Brooke Leo, to my Aussie family for the first time. It felt like they had known each other for years.
I recently called to tell them about another new Leo — my daughter, due this fall. I didn’t have to pay 25 cents per minute, either.
To most, the Olympics is an event that briefly brings people together despite distance and differences.
For me, it’s the event that brought the people I love together for a lifetime.
