When city sanitation worker Matthew Tulloch joined a Black Friday line outside a Kmart on Long Island, he was looking for a good deal on a TV and VCR. He found love.
On that cold and crowded sidewalk in Valley Stream nearly two decades ago, Tulloch, 39, struck up a conversation with the sweet-faced woman standing next to him. That seven-hour, dusk-till-dawn chat sparked a torrid romance. Two years later, the couple wed.
"It's one of those love-at-first sight stories," Michaelle Tulloch, 41, said yesterday, after going on a $1,000 shopping spree at Best Buy in Union Square - a prize the couple won in an essay contest by telling the story of how they met. "Black Friday will always be a memorable day for us. That was the day that changed our lives."
The Tullochs were among the thousands of shoppers who flooded city stores yesterday. It's a ritual they've repeated every year since meeting in 1991.
But for the pair of TV lovers - there's one in all eight rooms of their Valley Stream home - Black Friday carries a significance that goes far beyond nabbing cheap gifts. "It's how we celebrate our anniversary," Matthew Tulloch said. "We love standing in the lines and telling people the story of how we met."
It began with a glance. Matthew Tulloch, then 21, noticed Michaelle almost immediately when he showed up outside the Kmart. The moment he realized she too was on the line alone, he quietly celebrated and then angled to get her attention.
"When our eyes connected, I could feel something," Matthew Tulloch said.
The conversation came easily. It quickly moved from the mundane - what both were hoping to buy that day - into more personal details of their lives. By the time the sky started to lighten, the chat was still going.
"Whatever I spoke to her about, it led her to bring up something else," Matthew Tulloch said. "But it took a few hours for me to build up the courage to ask for her number."
He finally did - just before the Kmart doors swung open. They spoke on the phone that night. A date followed.
"Eighteen years later, here we are," said Michaelle Tulloch, who works for Home Depot. "We have a house and two kids. Sometimes, when you're having a good conversation, you forget the cold. He made me forget the cold."
