Postcard from Rio: American couple steals show with memorable USA gear
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RIO DE JANIERO – Copacabana Beach is the world’s largest outdoor catwalk, a seaside fashion show with a kaleidoscope of colors. Outlandish works here. Garish works. Loud definitely works.
On the night of Team USA’s 2-1 opening match win over Ghana in Brazil’s World Cup, nothing worked like a brand new pair of star-spangled pants.
Actually, it was her husband’s star-spangled pants, which she was wearing.
[Photos: U.S. soccer fans catch World Cup fever]
Danny Akl met Thalia Kamel four years ago on the first day of med school. His dad is Lebanese and grew up in Egypt. Her parents are Italian and Greek. He went to college in Indiana. She’s from Montreal and moved to Calgary. He’s fluent in Arabic; she’s fluent in Greek, Italian, and French. Oh, and they went to school together in the Caribbean.
Sound like the start of an American story?
They fell in love over textbooks and cadavers and their parents made them a promise: if the two of them graduated on time, they would pay for a trip to Brazil for the World Cup.
They studied. They graduated. They got married three weeks ago in Old Montreal. Thalia became an American citizen. Their parents’ promise was kept, and they decided to honeymoon on a South American beach with a million other soccer fans.
“We said we’d make it to the next World Cup, no matter what,” said Danny, 27. “And here we are.”
But first: the pants.
Danny was celebrating his bachelor party at a bar in Nashville last year when he spotted a bartender wearing red, white, and blue spandex.
“I love those pants,” he exclaimed.
The bartender had another pair. She said they were his – if he wore them.
So he disappeared into the bathroom and emerged in the spandex. A good time was had by all. But Danny had something else in mind for the pants, and he brought them back to Chicago where he and Thalia lived.
Then he brought them here, to Rio. And this morning, four years after they met and three weeks after they married, Danny told Thalia "that she should wear the pants. For America."
She put them on, and late in the afternoon the couple strolled out onto the beach with all the other soccer crazies, and, well, they didn’t get very far.
They were constantly stopped for pictures. And a few hugs, and cheers, and chants, and most of them not from Americans.
“I LOVE BON JOVI!” screamed one guy in a German flag.
Several Argentinians bombarded the couple and posed with Thalia without saying an English word. It was like she was the Statue of Liberty in flip-flops.
[Related: Most photogenic fans of the World Cup ]
Even this interview was interrupted on multiple occasions for “U-S-A! U-S-A!” screams, which the Akl’s obliged, even though one is brand new to citizenship and the other has an ongoing love affair with the Brazilian soccer team.
They are a walking, hand-holding, newlywed United Nations, but on this night, on this beach, they are Team USA standard bearers.
“It’s the definition of American, right?” he said. And she nodded.
One problem though, for anyone (and everyone) asking: they have no idea who made the pants. There’s no label.
Oh well. The couple made it to marriage and made it to Copacabana beach to watch the U.S. play.
May the couple, and the pants, live long and prosper.
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