By Mia Watkins | For the Birmingham Times
Michelle & Reggie Torbor
Live: Forest Park
Married: April 30, 2005
Met: Usually, student group meetings on college campuses result in free food, but for Michelle and Reggie Torbor, it’s resulted in two decades of marriage.
The two met at a Fellowship of Christian Athletes (FCA) meeting on the campus of Auburn University through a friend of Michelle’s. Reggie was on the football team while Michelle was concentrating on her studies.
“I had never seen him,” she said. “I didn’t know him. I’m like, ‘How did I not see him in all these years?’ We met on a Tuesday night, and I would go with her. Our focus was getting a free Chick-Fil-A sandwich, get our dinner and listen to whoever is going to speak and get up out of there.”
Her friend, a social butterfly, would introduce Michelle, an introvert, to people in attendance that she knew. Michelle meeting Reggie was brief.
“It was a quick hi and bye,” she described the interaction. “Then, we walked off and did FCA. At the end of FCA, I saw him leaving. There’s a column in the building, so I was peeking around the column when I said, ‘Hey, it was nice to meet you.’ In his mind, his story is that I was stalking him from around the column, trying to get his attention. I was just saying nice to meet you.”
The members of the organization would trade off cooking for the group. The same friend she attended the initial meeting with would cook for the group, but Michelle would usually skip dinners with them. Finally, her friend convinced her to go to Reggie’s.
“He made jambalaya, and, funny enough, he asked me to make the cornbread,” she said.” It was like Jiffy cornbread, and I put too much milk in it. He can cook, like cook cook, and I do not cook. So, I messed up the cornbread. So now when he says, ‘You can’t cook,’ I say, ‘You know that.’ But, that was the night that I could tell that he kind of liked me. Some of his friends had told me that he liked me. Beyond that, we just became friends. We would be in the same Bible studies. In my mind, that was all it was. I knew he liked me, but that was all it was for me.” Michelle said the friendship continued through hanging out with the FCA group and talking on the phone.
“We were talking about deep stuff,” she said. “There was another time that my roommate cooked, and I actually stayed. He came, and we stayed up all night talking about our families and how we grew up and some of the hardships. Our lives were pretty similar in how we were raised.”
The two parted ways for a break, but Michelle said she couldn’t stop thinking about Reggie.
“I was like, ‘Oh shoot, I like him,’” she said. “I was so mad about it because it really was like a switch went off. I had it in my mind that I was trying to graduate and get out of there. I didn’t want to be in a relationship, and then all of a sudden, I went home and couldn’t stop thinking about him.”
First date: Michelle and Reggie, after recognizing their feelings for each other, decided to go on what they call their first unofficial date. Reggie cooked and they watched the movie “Antwone Fisher.”
“I cried [at the movie],” she said. “It was such a good movie. At the end of the movie, we were just talking and kissed. We hadn’t talked about liking each other. It was like my little “Love Jones” moment. From there, he asked me if I wanted to spend the night and I was like, “No.” He said, “You can sleep in my bed, and I won’t bother you.’ I was like, ‘Absolutely not. This is a setup. You know it and I know it, and I’m going home. So, I left and we talked the next day. Then, we set up what we call our first date, which was to Red Lobster.”
The turn: Michelle said she knew Reggie was the one for her fairly quickly.
“In my mind, I did not want to be married and have kids because I had never seen it done well,” she said. “Before him, there was never a moment where I thought I was going to marry somebody, that it seemed like a real possibility. Probably about a month into us talking after that first date, I think he told me that he loved me, and I didn’t say anything back. But I knew that I thought that I did, but I was just scared of this idea of falling for somebody. I don’t think it was very long before I had thought through it and said it back. We were calling each other wifey and husband by that summer. There was a bond, and we really attribute that to the friendship that we had before.”
The proposal: After Reggie was drafted by the New York Giants, Michelle went up to visit with his mother and sister. He knew he would be proposing while she was there, so he contacted his former FCA mentor and friend to buy a ring for Michelle.
“I told him that I wanted to propose to Michelle, and he had been instrumental in our lives,” Reggie remembered. “I didn’t have a lot of spare time, so I was like, ‘Hey, will you please go to pick out a ring for me?’ He said, ‘What kind of ring?’ I said, ‘I don’t know, I’ve never done this before. Go find the nicest ring you can find.’ He was in Auburn and he walked in and said he needed the nicest ring they had. He ends up mailing me this ring.”
He proposed that evening with the help of a rose.
“I’d bought a yellow rose; roses are her favorite, and yellow is her favorite color,” he said. “I said some sweet nothings; I don’t remember what I said. I was a playa back then. I was smooth. I put the bulb of the rose in her hand, and I held on to the stem. I told her how much I loved her and that I wanted to spend the rest of my life with her, and I had the ring tucked in the palm of my hand. As I was saying that, I released the ring and it slid up the stem to the bulb.”
“It was such a sweet moment,” Michelle added. “His words reflected how I felt about him and how I knew he felt about me. It was like the start of a new part of our journey.”
The wedding: The two got married in front of 300 guests at the Wynfrey Hotel attached to the Riverchase Galleria. The ceremony was officiated by the same friend who bought the ring, Chet Williams. Williams, who died a few years ago, also provided the couple with premarital counseling. The colors were champagne and cream.
“It was very elegant,” Michelle said. “I had looked at every wedding and book, and anything I asked he said yes. It was the wedding of my dreams.”
Reggie said he remembers her walking down the aisle.
“I remember being so nervous, scared with butterflies,” he said. “Then, as she walked up, when I saw her, she was so beautiful. There was peace that started growing, overtaking the nervousness. I just remember being so proud and so happy. I felt like this was what I was supposed to be doing. By the time she got to me, I remember having this calmness.”
Michelle remembers something that Reggie did at the reception.
“I was exhausted and my face hurt from smiling so much,” she said. “At the end, I think I was getting a little dizzy. He looked at me and said, ‘I’m going to get you out of here.’ He took my hand and basically led me out. I waved and smiled at people, but it was such a moment of protection, like he’s got me.”
The honeymoon: “I went to practice,” Reggie said. “We got married April 30. I think we had maybe two weeks before I had to be back in New Jersey for practice. It’s one of the reasons why we planned the wedding so quickly. We knew if we didn’t do it that month, it would have been another year at least before we could get married.”
Words of wisdom: Reggie said he doesn’t necessarily believe in soulmates, and that love is something you work at daily.
“My view is that you find someone, you get as close as you can, and you choose each other every single day,” he said. “You have to fight for each other every single day. Some days are better than others, some days that fight is in the background and you learn and evolve together. That need to choose each other gets easier. It’s much easier 21 years later than it was at five.”
Michelle said their friendship laid the foundation for a successful relationship.
“What has helped us is our friendship, our truly caring about the other person,” she said. “I think that in many ways, the ways we have hurt each other are a product of the ways that we have been hurt. When I look at this person as somebody I truly care about and my friend, then I can lean into patience. My love can be more long-suffering. I can withstand the hard times.”
Happily ever after: Reggie went on to play in the NFL for eight years and is now the owner of Pylon Building Group. Michelle is a licensed counselor and owner of Cardinal Wellness and the brain-mapping clinic, Novo Integrative. The Torbors share two sons, who are both in college.
