The 40-year journey to love of Danny Vazquez and Baby Cruz

It’s their first Christmas together as husband and wife. But for real estate developer Danny Vazquez and businesswoman Baby Cruz, it’s been a journey of 40 years that started in Hong Kong with an unlikely friendship between two couples, widowhood, a relationship that has been rocked by intrigue and society gossip, deaths in the family and, finally, married life.

They’ve known each other since the 1970s, and so when Danny asked Baby to marry him in September, it was not one of those grand gestures he was certainly capable of.  They were in Baby’s apartment in Makati and Danny said, “Why don’t we get married?” As simple as that. Baby said yes — and they set it 12 days later.

They flew to Hong Kong and stayed at The Peninsula, where Danny bought her engagement ring — a teardrop 10-karat diamond that’s so big it covers the lower part of her finger.

You would think that for such prominent society figures, no less than a grand wedding would do. But no, they wanted it as simple as possible. At their age — Baby in her 60s and Danny in his 80s — she  thought that the less fuss there was, the better.

She picked out an unworn Valentino dress from her closet to wear. They didn’t bother with invitations, which was so unlike Baby, who likes to do things properly, and the wedding was held in a little private church at St. Paul’s in Manila and the reception in two function rooms at Shangri-La Makati.

“It wasn’t a formal sit-down, it was very casual,” says Baby. “There was a lot of food and people were mingling around. I had only five guests and Danny had more. We wanted it for family and for those who understood and were with us all this time, those who touched our lives these past 40 years.”

The couple lives in a condominium building where each owns several units. In Baby’s unit — where she has lived for 15 years or so — she gives us a peek of her Christmas table. 

All the chandeliers in her apartments are made of Murano glass but this is the only black one and embellished with frosted twigs and red berries, dropping down to  the middle of the square table where she and Danny have lunch every day (he comes home from the office to have the paté with black truffles that his wife makes, soup and scotch on the rocks).

“Danny’s taste is more cosmopolitan, he likes pica-pica, cheeses and chorizo. Ako, minsan, bigla akong magpapaluto ng paksiw na isda,” she says.

Her Christmas table is set with chargers and plates from Turkey. Baby saw them and had to wait six months for the set to arrive. Baby loves to entertain and collects tableware from all over the world, which are stored neatly in one of her apartments, one room looking like a home store aisle — plates, chargers and bowls stacked on top of one another. They range from Japanese plates to lacquer bento boxes; Chinese, Korean, Indian  plates; stoneware; fondue sets; all styles and material of chopsticks; table napkin rings that go from the bejeweled look bought in Dubai to the kawaii hand-painted rings from Japan. 

What gives us a more intimate glimpse into the couple’s lives is a pair of gold-plated kneeling reindeer on the table — their antlers holding place cards: “Daniel” and “Baby” in script. It’s a kind of old-world conventionalism you no longer see in everyday tables today.

Then again, that’s maybe expected because Baby describes her husband as having the ways of the “old world, gentle and genteel, a renaissance man.” 

Danny describes Baby as  “unique in many ways, very pleasant, hindi mo alam kung galit or hindi. She has her own mind and she calms me.”    

Before they got married, Baby consulted a priest and nuns. She asked them — should they, shouldn’t they? While Baby had been a widow for 20 years, Danny’s wife Luisa “Ising” Madrigal — daughter of tycoon Vicente Madrigal — had just died six months before — and they both took care of her after she had a stroke eight years ago.

“In the last six years, Ising never said a word,” says Danny, “So it was very lonely. Baby was the only one I could talk to.”

Their priest friend told Baby there was nothing in the Bible that mentions waiting for one year before a widow or widower can marry again and he told her, “Why should you care what other people say?”

“The circumstances were peculiar,” says Danny when asked why he wanted to formalize their relationship.

These “peculiar” circumstances started 40 years ago in Hong Kong where Baby was living with her banker husband Jessie Cruz. Their designer friend Giovanni Sanna invited Danny Vazquez and his wife Ising to come to dinner with him at Baby’s home in Repulse Bay.

It was friendship at first dinner for the two couples — even though the Vazquezes were 20 years older. But the timing was right for a friendship to blossom between Baby and Ising.

“Ising was a Blue Lady but when she had a problem with Mrs. Marcos, all her friends avoided her. She had only one friend and that was Baby. That’s why they became so close,” says Danny.

Baby adds, “Ising was saying, ‘Oh my God,’ she’s as young as my niece, and her niece was actually my classmate in school. At first I was afraid, you know naman before, they’re older than you. I was in my twenties.”

“After dinner in their house, I was on the phone trying to call a taxi when Baby’s husband said, ‘No, Danny, I will drive you.’ I said, but it’s on the other side of Hong Kong. He said, it’s okay, I want to talk to you. When we were in the car — my wife, myself and Jessie — he said, ‘You know, I’ve been offered this job in Manila. The children are getting old, they hardly know the Philippines, so I think I’ll take the job. Ising asked him, ‘Who is the job with?’ He said, Kokoy Romualdez. Well, Kokoy and I were not on very good terms  and Ising told him immediately, ‘My God, Jess, don’t take the job!’ But he took it anyway. And the difficulties came.” 

Danny and Jessie became good friends. “We would play pool together in Hong Kong,” he says.

Apart from Hong Kong, Baby and her husband Jess lived in London, New York, San Francisco and Bangkok. Then her husband died of a heart attack, and her friendship with the Vazquezes and Ising’s older sister Chito Madrigal continued.  They would travel together — Danny and Ising, Baby and Chito. “Once we went around the world with Chito for 40 days — we went to Rome, Paris, New York and San Franciso. I said, I was tired, I wanted to go home. You know what they did? They called my son Boey, sent him a ticket and said, you come and stay with your mother.”

 “I miss Ising, she was very pilya also, eh,” Baby says. “We went shopping together, we went everywhere! When she traveled and I wasn’t with her, nagagalit siya.”

By then Baby and Ising got into business together, bringing in the salon Franck Provost, which Baby describes as “Ising’s baby. I’m grateful to her for so many things. Ang bait niya.”

Society people often gossiped about them. At first, Baby says, it hurt her a lot but Ising would say, “Wala silang pakialam.”   

“At first, of course I was mad. How vicious naman. I didn’t really go out, I didn’t go out on dates. At first I  was annoyed, then I thought I guess life is really like this. To friends, you don’t have to explain anything; to people who don’t know me or like me, they will always find something bad to say about me. And I’ve accepted that. I just think of what Michelle Obama said, about how when people go low, you take the high road.”

When Ising died, it also broke her heart. She had experienced loss a month before that when her last brother died as well. Her favorite brother that she had taken care of for almost a year in her apartment.

The losses through the years that Danny and Baby experienced would have knocked out other people, but they were each other’s rock. Danny’s only son Miguel Vazquez died of a heart attack while competing in the Iron Man in Camsur and two months before, his daughter Bella passed away. Baby lost her three brothers, the last one a month before Ising died.   

“More than anything, you have to be each other’s friend and that’s what we were. If you cannot communicate with each other, wala.” 

Now that they’re married, have the rumors stopped? Well, they’ve just changed subjects: the couple didn’t sign a prenuptial agreement. Baby says, “I don’t know why people are interested in that. I feel that if you cannot trust each other on money, why get married? I’m not interested in what Ising had because that belongs to her children. So I was teasing Danny, you have to work harder to take care of me.”

The couple is looking to traveling more and doing things together. “Danny’s very strong. He takes care of himself, he’s a doctor eh. You know, he also took care of Ising’s father.”

Baby’s idea of retirement is in a little villa somewhere in Italy, her favorite country and one that she’s explored extensively, where she could go to the market and buy fresh produce and cook for Danny.

Danny likes Italy, he says, but he’s thinking of a villa in Mexico where they’ve traveled before. “It’s more lively.” 

How does it feel to be a wife again after 20 years? Baby says, “I think about it many times. There are no life-changing things that are happening to me or to us. It’s still the same except we’re together. You know, Danny’s very cariñoso. I feel he’s like an old shoe, like at the end of the day when you’re tired and you get home, you slip into your own slippers and you suddenly feel okay.”

In the course of three hours, Danny comes home twice — to have a quick lunch with his wife and then he goes back to the office and then comes back again for dessert — and throughout the conversation, he keeps looking at Baby with a smile, as if realizing for the first time that his friend is now his wife.  

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Check out Tanya Lara’s travel blog at www.findingmyway.net. Follow her on Instagram and Twitter @iamtanyalara.Photos by BENING BATUIGAS