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It wasn't exactly "When Harry Met Sally," but the story line of "When Harold Met Sandra" comes close.
Harold Gruber and Sandra Hudak, a Wilmington surgical team who recently celebrated their first wedding anniversary, almost didn't make it to the altar. In fact, they almost didn't make it to a first date.
The couple met as young doctors in a rural Virginia podiatric practice. Harold, an ambitious senior associate, was taken aback when the founder of the practice decided to bring in a third doctor and was not interested in sharing the workload no matter how pretty the new doc was.
"I was livid," recalled Harold, 40, a normally easy-going New Jersey native. "I didn't think I was busy enough,"
Sandra, 39, who grew up near Pittsburgh and spent four years in Chicago after her residency, wasn't looking for love either and certainly didn't think she'd find it with Harold.
"A podiatrist was the last person I wanted to meet," she recalled.
And yet, as so often happens in the movies, dislike turned to like and like turned to ... well, you've seen it a million times.
"Actually, he was just professional," Sandra recalled. "In fact, in that first year, he barely even talked to me."
Harold acknowledges now that there was immediate attraction but said he and Sandra didn't go on a date until more than a year later. Both had plans to be in Manhattan one weekend and, when they met up with friends in a bar, talked and talked all night.
"From that point we started dating but kept it under wraps for a good six months," Harold said.
The couple decided to become partners (professional and personal) and began searching for areas in which to start a practice. A broker told them about the well-established practice of Dr. Howard Kattler in Wilmington, and soon a match was made (again, professional and personal).
Harold and Sandra purchased the practice, renamed it Tri-State Foot and Ankle Center and soon opened a second office in Hockessin.
Podiatric assistant Debbie Tulowitzki had been with Kattler for seven years and stayed on after Gruber and Sudak bought the practice.
"Patients like knowing they're husband and wife," she said. "They know that if he's not here that she'll back him up. But Harold's always making a joke of it. He says he married the competition."
In reality it isn't like that at all, Harold said. The couple usually sees patients in different offices -- he in Wilmington, she in Hockessin -- but assist one another for surgeries.
"When you're in the O.R., whoever is the surgeon is basically the captain," Harold said. "When Sandra's the surgeon, it's her show. I'm just there to assist."
The couple said they bond working so closely together and often discuss cases and surgeries, which can last five hours or more, at night.
"It makes for some pretty funky dinner conversations," Harold said.
Sandra believes performing surgeries with her husband has drawn them closer. After all, there aren't many couples who insert titanium pins and screws in living human bone, reattach severed Achilles tendons and set broken feet, then go home to discuss their day over a steak and a glass of Chianti.
But would he stop to ask for directions?
"Actually, he would," Sandra said, dismissing the driving allusion. "When you're doing a procedure it can be somewhat subjective. I've got my way of doing things and he's got his, but we're both open to suggestions."
Sandra said she and Harold are like every other married couple with regard to household "juggling," but it's compounded because they're also in business together.
"We have all the usual tasks of laundry, cooking, cleaning, etc., but decisions also need to be made relative to schedules, advertising, hiring and firing, office management, renovations, you name it. You just have to know when to turn it all off -- when you go home and do something simple like enjoy mindless TV."
At the same time, she said, one learns to leave the "personal" at home.
"Knowing how to draw those lines is critical for couples that work and live together, and it was for that very reason we chose to open the second office," she said.
Inevitably, some of the cutting they do on the job spills over into their home life, especially when it comes time to carve the Thanksgiving turkey.
"We both try not to," Sandra said of the holiday chore. "His mom will say 'Oh, let's let the surgeon do it.' We both kind of look at each other and then automatically default to her son."
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