SMOKEY POINT — They first met about three years ago, but they feel like they’ve weathered as many storms as a couple that’s been married 10 years.
As Valentine’s Day approached, the lovebirds reflected on some of their successes and challenges.
Ezequiel and Lisa Lopez Fuentes celebrated their two-year wedding anniversary Jan. 31, after opening their Kropp 3D Training business in Arlington earlier that month.
“Zeke” hails from Argentina, where he was trained in roller derby techniques that a U.S. team owner wanted her own players to be trained in.
That led Zeke to travel north in the summer of 2013, to Seattle and Las Vegas, the latter of which was where he met Lisa, a Marysville native and member of the team he was training.
Zeke’s initial three-month stay in the states coincided with his 30th birthday.
“I was all alone out here, and Lisa was so nice to me,” said Zeke, who estimated that they spent the night talking, from 9 p.m. to 4 a.m. “We watched movies and shared pizza. I didn’t feel comfortable living a bachelor’s life anymore, and it was really fun and comfortable being around her.”
“The strength of our connection was like nothing I’d ever had before,” said Lisa, whose divorced was still recent then. She was gratified by how quickly her daughter Audrey, now 10, bonded with Zeke. “If she hadn’t been okay with him, that would have been it, but they really grew close.”
Zeke ultimately had to return to Argentina, but he and Lisa kept in constant contact by Skyping each other daily.
“It was a little scary at first, because I wanted to be with him so badly, but I barely knew anything about him,” Lisa said. “Everything was happening so fast, so I didn’t want to make another mistake. But I couldn’t help feeling like I’d met my soulmate.”
Zeke took his own leap of faith by selling his company in Argentina and moving to the states, with the hope of bringing the Kropp training technique to America just before Christmas of that year.He married Lisa following the New Year of 2014.
Although Zeke made contact with U.S. gym owners interested in the Kropp technique, he still struggled to find employment.
“For at least a year, we were living off my savings and her job income, working at hospice,” Zeke said. “I was applying to places like McDonald’s and Wendy’s, just to get something, anything, that would pay the bills. But I was told that I was either overqualified or I didn’t have enough references in the states.”
Even after Zeke managed to land a succession of gym management positions, he found himself getting depressed with the changing seasons, since he was so accustomed to the more-consistent sunlight of his native Argentina.
“He’d never had days where it was dark when he woke up and again when he got off work, so I told him to take some Vitamin D,” Lisa said. “We were still going to the grocery store with a calculator in hand, but even when we argued, we always remembered what had brought us together. I couldn’t live without this person. He was my missing piece.”
Lisa credited Zeke with caring for my daughter “like she was his own,” and recalled how her daughter demonstrated the feelings were mutual during his VISA process, when the family learned one of the options would have included him leaving the country for another six months.
“Audrey said, ‘You can’t leave again! It’s mayhem here without you,'” Lisa laughed. “So that settled that.”
“There were times when I’d come home from dropping Audrey off at school, and I’d want to cry,” Zeke said. “I’d ask myself, ‘How are we going to pay the rent, or buy food?’ There were times when we both broke, but we got through it. Divorce was never in our vocabulary. Lisa is my best friend. I’d rather stay at home with her than hang out with the dudes.”
With the Jan. 9 opening of Kropp 3D Training at 3323 169th Place NE in Arlington, Zeke and Lisa are able to spend time together pursuing the fitness techniques that introduced them.
