The Irish Homecoming - My Forever American Valentine - meeting the love of my life in New York

It took Kerry native April Drew a visit to New York to find her true Valentine

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April and her Valentine John

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It took a move to New York for April Drew to find the Irish man of her dreams, and she’ll never want for a Valentine again thanks to the love her life, John Mooney.

It was across a dark bar in the Bronx back in 2004 that I saw him.  Just what the doctor ordered -- a tall, dark, handsome Irishman looking my way. 

I was flattered. I had never seen him around our neighborhood. The date was December 23, two days before my second Christmas away from family in Ireland. 

I was nervous about that, but about 10:30 p.m. that specific night I had a feeling of hope again. But before I get ahead of myself let me dip a little further back. 

Read More: The Irish Homecoming - There’s no place like home for the Christmas holidays

I arrived in New York in September 2003. I didn’t go alone. I had met a lad from Kerry a few months before on a night out in Tralee. We dated for a while and then he asked me to move to New York with him that autumn.  

It was like a dream. I’d always wanted to try life in America.  I loved the glitz and glam I’d only ever seen on the television, so I accepted his offer and in a matter of months we were New York-bound, all loved up and ready for the big challenge set before us. 

Little did I know then that the challenge would be the relationship and not the country we were now calling home. 

We settled into life in New York pretty quickly. We obtained jobs the first week, found a place to stay and instantly began getting to know the city. 

We had a great six months and then after that things went downhill. We were young. He was a year younger. We began arguing a lot. There was trust issues and slowly we began to live separate lives.

We would have broken up sooner if we were living back in Ireland, but because you move country together and know very few people it’s not as easy (or brave) to say goodbye and move out.

It took another year of silly arguments for that to happen.  Don’t get me wrong, when it was good it was great but when it was bad it was horrible.

I cried to my best friends back in Ireland, I grumbled to my new friends in New York and on their advice and following my own gut we had several mini-break ups during the last few months. Some more dramatic than others, but we still stayed together. 

Early December 2004 was the last straw in our relationship. Two of my best friends were visiting from Ireland for my birthday and everything went belly up on a night out.  I won’t go into details, but it turned out my suspicions were correct and that put a nail in the coffin. 

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