Breakfast at Tacodeli
When musician Russell Hudson wrecked his car in 2003, he decided to buy a guitar instead of new wheels.
The incident left him without insurance or transportation, so the Austinite walked down the hill from his Zilker Park apartment and into Tacodeli, the original Spyglass location.
His order? Completely off the menu — he asked for a job.
“They were still a holein-the-wall taqueria back then,” Hudson says. “I’m pretty committed. I found my place with them.”
Fast-forward 10 years and several promotions. Russell is now general manager of the BYOB taco chain, a drummer in the band Seven Circles and no longer lives in those hillside apartments.
He’s now a Houston resident, thanks to Stacey Szydlik.
One day, the striking brunette walked down the same hill and into Tacodeli while a certain manager was working. Their eyes met, and a three-month flirtation ensued.
“It became this cat-andmouse game,” he says. Later, their paths crossed again at a restaurant downtown during South by Southwest. “I was out to dinner at Sway with my bandmates, celebrating the completion of our album, when I saw her. I couldn’t stop looking over my shoulder to watch her.”
The trouble was, his crush was on a date with someone else. But that didn’t stop Stacey from making a strategic move. She detoured toward Russell’s table on a return trip from the ladies’ room.
“I just got some gumption,” she says. “He’d also been staring at me the entire night during dinner, so I walked up to him and introduced myself.”
Russell is all smiles telling the story. “She made a bold move; it was pretty awesome.”
Weeks passed before Stacey visited Tacodeli again. She gave it a 50-50 chance that he would even remember her. Did he ever. For a full month, Russell waited patiently until the object of his affection finally breezed through the doors. He dropped everything to scribble down a hasty note.
“She went up to get her drink, and I said, ‘I think this fell out of your purse,’ ” he recalls. Stunned, Stacey didn’t know what to make of the Post-it. “Then it clicked that I was trying to ask her out.”
A Louis C.K. comedy special was playing in her living room when he picked her up for their first date. And handmade props for an “Arrested Development” viewing party were on display.
“I immediately knew that this was going to be awesome,” Russell says. “I have a weird sense of humor that might be an acquired taste for some.”
He felt confident on the drive to Zax Pints & Plates. Stacey had some doubts.
“There was a photo of his niece and nephew in the car, and I assumed they were his,” she admits, laughing. “The entire meal I’m waiting for him to say that he has two children. I was very young and naive at the time, and wasn’t ready for kiddos. So I resolved that we’d just be friends and was my complete self on the date.”
Stacey, 31, learned that Russell, 33, is an uncle — not a father — on the ride home. The romance resumed.
By their fourth date, to Seven Circles’ CD-release party at the Parish, Stacey had convinced herself that she was dating a rock star. The couple spent time at the Barton Creek Greenbelt, trying new restaurants on South Congress and taking in live music.
Then suddenly, the relationship changed. Stacey took an introspective trip to Spain, quit her advertising job and accepted a position in Houston with the Memorial Hermann Foundation.
They dated longdistance for nearly three years, until April 2015, when Russell popped the question.
“There was always talk that they were going to open a Tacodeli here,” Stacey says. “That was the light at the end of the tunnel. We knew at some point that we were going to be together in Houston.”
With plans for a Bayou City expansion underway, her boyfriend started piecing together an elaborate scheme of his own.
Russell, who’d never seen the Gerald D. Hines Waterwall in person, painted a canvas of himself proposing in front of the multistory fountain. One spring weekend, he casually suggested that they visit the landmark.
“I asked a family member that Stacey had never met to deliver this huge, wrapped painting to ‘the most beautiful girl there,’ ” Russell says. He’d written the lyrics to their favorite song, “Click Lang Echo” by STS9, on the back, too. “By the time she’d unwrapped and saw the image, I was down on one knee.”
Stacey said “yes!” and 18 months of wedding planning began.
“(The best part) was honestly the fact that we hired someone good. She was so meticulous,” Russell says of Aisle Runners wedding consultant Tai Quarles. “I really enjoyed all of it: picking out tuxes for my groomsmen, cake tasting, menu tasting. It wasn’t fun cutting our invitation list.”
Stacey agrees. Her mother comes from a large Sicilian family; there were 66 RSVPs from Italy alone. The betrothed pair chose wedding venues accordingly.
“The first place we booked was the Petroleum Club. I went during the golden hour, and it was gorgeous; there was this pink glow over everything,” Stacey says. “I’m in graduate school at Rice University, where my cousin had her wedding. I remember standing there and thinking, ‘I want to go to school here. I want to get married here.’ It’s nondenominational. You can decorate or have whatever ceremony you want. Something about that flexibility really called to me.”
The bride applied creative license to her flowers, too. She worked with Amanda Bee Florals to design a provincial watercolor motif, incorporating French blue, raspberry and garnet hues into the centerpieces and bouquets.
Even her dress, a strapless, mermaid-style gown from Weddings by Debbie “fraught with rose lace,” was a nod to Stacey’s petal obsession.
But on June 11, as the bride and groom exchanged vows in the Rice Memorial Chapel, nothing else mattered.
“It felt like a such a life moment,” Russell says. “Like when Frodo puts on the ring, and the here and now goes away, and this alternate universe of being is forged into union for eternity. That really shook my foundation in a good way.”
The newly proclaimed Mr. and Mrs. Hudson celebrated with 260 of their nearest and dearest downtown at the Petroleum Club until 1 a.m.
“Russell got on the drums and did a solo for everybody,” Stacey says of her favorite memory from the reception. “The Royal Dukes Band announced a special guest. Then Russell got back there and just started wailing.”
The newlyweds, who honeymooned in Thailand for two weeks, are happily adjusting to life in the same city. The groom finally relocated in April, when Tacodeli opened on Washington, and his band dropped a new album, “Retrograde Parade,” in August.
“They say that the big three is: don’t move, don’t get a new job and don’t get married at the same time,” Russell says. “But I’ve tackled some big life events that I’m pretty proud of.”