Fitness coach weds over 2,000 couples at ‘wedding hall-gym’
TAMPA — Clad in a purple dress shirt, black slacks and a mask, wedding officiant Nan Klater stood near the water on Harbour Island in Tampa and faced the brides on a balmy January afternoon.
Before her were Tiffany Velazquez and Yaribilisa Colon, who were preparing to commit their lives to each other in front of their families and friends.
“By the power and authority vested in me by the state of Florida, I now pronounce you wife and wife and spouses for life,” Klater declared to the young couple.
It was one of more than 2,000 ceremonies Klater has presided over, many of them for same-sex couples. For over 25 years, the 63-year-old has officiated weddings across Tampa Bay. Since 2010, many of those have been held in her South Tampa “wedding hall-gym,” where mats, fitness balls and weights are hidden behind a red divider and swapped for chairs and wedding decor.
“I always say I’m in the commitment business,” she said. “I’ll commit you to your husband and wife or I’ll commit you to yourself for your fitness goals.”
The beginnings of two businesses
Though she was born in Pittsburgh, Klater has spent much of her life in Florida. When she was 10, her mother died of heart issues. Her father later remarried and the family moved to the Sunshine State.
Growing up in households filled with love, Klater said her own view of marriage was shaped by her parents.
“I felt like I was born of two loving people and then when Dad remarried, I saw the second version of two loving people,” Klater said. “They showed me how to have a relationship. They showed me how to have a marriage.”
As an adult, Klater ran a cellphone and pager business, notarizing documents as an add-on to her services. She befriended the owners of a tattoo parlor nearby and the couple asked her to marry them. So Klater researched how to become a wedding officiant and was certified in the state of Florida.
As beepers faded out of style, Klater sought a new business model. She still helped couples tie the knot from time to time and
wondered if she could pivot to the wedding business.
But Klater herself could not legally be married. In 2004, she and her wife, Gabrielle Barry, exchanged vows in Tampa’s Ballast Point Park in a private ceremony with just the two of them and their dog. It would be another 11 years before Florida would recognize marriages between same-sex couples.
“I grew up thinking that I would probably never be legally married,” Klater said. “So to us, the commitment ceremony was a ceremony of the heart.”
Klater and Barry each wrote down their vision for the relationship — what they needed and wanted from each other as they spent the rest of their lives together. And they promised they would stick together no matter what.
They drew up wills, filled out health care surrogate forms and granted each other power of attorney, the only legal options they had.
Throughout the years, Klater continued to officiate for other same-sex couples.
There was no question that Klater would officiate for Sherry Trunzo and Kim Ann Callan when they decided to commit their lives to each other in 2005.
Callan knew Klater through a women’s professional network. Klater helped Callan when she moved to Lakeland and often attended art showings that Callan and other friends organized. Later, Callan would introduce Trunzo to Klater.
“That we knew her and she was gay — it meant a lot more to be having her do it because it’s kind of like we were all in solidarity together,” Trunzo, now 59, said. “It wasn’t like somebody that was just doing it because we were paying
them to do it.”
Around the same time, Klater began developing her fitness business. In 2005, she started seeing a personal trainer, but didn’t like his style. So she began to research how to become a fitness trainer and eventually started volunteering to teach classes at a city of Tampa gym she attended. In 2010, she purchased the studio in a strip mall on S Dale Mabry Highway where she now operates her two businesses, Ceremonies by Nan and Fitness Fun by Nan.
A ‘grand community of love’
After California legalized same-sex marriages, Klater and Barry traveled to San Diego to officially tie the knot in 2013. To Klater, love means her wife and the life they share. But it’s also bigger than that.
“We also have this grand community of love,” she said.
That community includes the couples she weds.
“I’m their best friend, sometimes for a year, sometimes for just that day,” Klater said.
Many years later, Callan and Trunzo still keep in touch with Klater.
“She’s one of those people that if you don’t see her for a year, it doesn’t matter,” said Callan, 63. “You pick up right where you left off.”
Even with couples she’s only known briefly, Klater tries to make the process easy to understand.
“She pretty much explains everything in detail,” said Colon, 26, whose marriage to Velazquez, 25, on Harbour Island was officiated by Klater.
For Brooks Wilkins, 56, and Suzanne Snyder, 57, Klater’s willingness to work with them, as well as her ability to operate out of her own studio, stood out to them when they decided to get married.
The couple exchanged vows in Klater’s wedding hall on Jan. 19. Before they walked into the studio, Klater started a playlist, with Bruno Mars’ Marry You first on the list. As Klater helped them say their vows, she stood under an arch wrapped in white tulle and golden Christmas lights against a pink wall.
Wilkins and Snyder exchanged a kiss. One of the reasons they chose Klater was because she seemed to be someone who exuded “peace, love and harmony.”
“We got that vibe from Nan,” Snyder said.
Klater also strives to care for her fitness class of seniors.
When the pandemic began, she moved her classes online so the group could continue to meet safely. During one December workout, Klater and Barry led their students through squats, planks and meditation as they broadcast from a room in their home, decorated with a menorah, Christmas tree and a Santa Snoopy.
The classes provide more than a simple workout. After one member, Peter Arizu, underwent surgery, members of the group brought him cookies and Klater visited the 77-yearold.
“We really appreciate each other immensely and contribute to each other’s well-being,” Arizu said. “And there’s so much compassion in this group.”
Between her two businesses, Klater is busy, as her wife can attest. But Barry said the couple has no intention of slowing down anytime soon.
“I don’t know if we’ll ever really retire,” Barry said, “because people need us and we need them.”
When they’re not working, Klater and Barry like to spend time with their godchildren.
Christina Hoggard met Klater as a child. Now, Klater and Barry are godparents to Hoggard’s children, Kaly Mabe, who turns 14 Saturday, and Cooper Anderson, 10. Klater helps take care of the kids from time to time, picking them up after school and taking them to extracurricular activities.
“She will do anything for anybody,” Hoggard said. “She will just go to the ends of the earth to make sure that you’re well taken care of.”
Tayari Jones is the guest author of the 2021 NEA Big Read: Central Florida, co-hosted by University of Central Florida. She will partake in a free, virtual discussion about her book “Silver Sparrow” on Feb. 23.
“I love the idea that the NEA is bringing people together all reading the same book because writing a book is a very solitary process and reading can be very solitary, but these opportunities to come together and discuss a book, I feel that it makes reading more rewarding,” said the New York Times bestselling author. “I think it helps us get closer to the fundamental truths of a work of art when you see the way that other people respond to it.”
Jones said “Silver Sparrow” addresses unblended families, as one family is kept a secret in the novel.
“I’ve met so many people who have lived their lives in the shadows. They can never say their father’s name. But lots of other people, just carry around the pain — like their parents got divorced, and their father remarried, and he has another family,” she said. “This is something that I don’t think is discussed enough, and I think there’s healing in talking about this.”
The NEA Big Read is a program of the National Endowment for the Arts in partnership with Arts
Midwest. Each year, it encourages people to read for pleasure and enlightenment with a selection of books — which includes “Silver Sparrow” for the 2020-2021 grant year.
“This is the government supporting the arts and the humanities,” said Jones, whose book “An American Marriage” made both Oprah’s Book Club List and former President Barack Obama’s summer reading list. “This is your tax dollars at work.”
She said the NEA Big Read also offers an opportunity
to highlight the importance of libraries, which are often awarded grants through the program and serve as partners. Locally, all five Seminole County Public Libraries branches hosted daytime and evening book discussion groups throughout Central Florida’s Big Read event, which began Jan. 11.
“Our public libraries are, to me, the best example of our tax dollars at work because ... people think that libraries are just like museums for books, but they are community centers,”
Jones said. “Libraries allow people to use computers and have internet access who may not have it at home. It’s a place where we expand our minds. And especially for people who are marginalized, people of color, people who are poor, the library is really a lifeline.”
The webinar with Jones takes place 7-8 p.m. Feb. 23 on Zoom. It’s free, but registration is required at ucffoundation.org/TayariJones. Find more information about the NEA Big Read: Central Florida at bigread.cah.ucf.edu.
For those looking for further enlightenment during Black History Month, Jones suggested three books.
‘The Street’ by Ann Petry
“The first blockbuster novel by a Black woman,” this novel that published in 1946 sold 1.5 million copies.
In the book, Petry discusses the “school to prison pipeline,” the lives of women who worked as maids, beauty standards and more.
“It has just aged like fine wine,” Jones said. “I think the reason it was such a splash is because when it was written in the ‘40s, she pulled no punches.”
In re-reading the novel recently, Jones discovered a prescient moment. The main character Lutie works for a rich man who sells toilet paper and paper
towels.
“He said the thing he sells is something that people always need so his company will always be profitable,” Jones said. “When I was reading this, at the height of the pandemic, I said, ‘Oh my goodness, how does she know?’
“It’s like social commentary, but it’s a page-turner. You cannot put it down.”
‘Meridian’ by Alice Walker
Jones referred to this work as an “unsung masterpiece.”
The book follows a Black man, Black woman and white woman, who are all involved with the Civil Rights Movement in the 1960s and 1970s.
“They’re like low-ranking, kind of everyday members of the Civil Rights Movement,” Jones said. “The three of them really have to work out not only what kind of world they
want to live in terms of justice and the real social consequences of equality, but they also have to decide what they mean to each other. It’s about race, but it’s also about gender and poverty.”
‘The Tradition’ by Jericho Brown
Readers will find a “wonderful surprise” in Brown’s “The Tradition,” according to Jones.
“Sometimes I think poetry can give us a really intense snapshot of our current moment,” she said. “If you ever get a chance to hear Jericho Brown speak and perform his work, oh, you will become a lover of poetry.”
Want to reach out? Email me at kchristiansen@ orlandosentinel.com. Find more fun things on Instagram @fun.things.orlando and Facebook @fun.things. orlando.
MIAMI — To successfully bring a stage play to the silver screen, the filmmaker must overcome the limitations of confined set.
Denzel Washington did it with “Fences.” Sidney Lumet with “The Wiz.” Barry Jenkins with “Moonlight.”
“One Night in Miami” — a fictionalized take on the meeting of boxing legend Cassius Clay, civil rights activist Malcolm X, football star Jim Brown and soul singer Sam Cooke at the Hampton House — is no different. An adaptation of the eponymous stage play by Kemp Powers, the film utilizes its set to showcase the beauty of Blackness even in the darkest of times.
“The Hampton House is a silent star in the movie,” said Dr. Enid Pinkney. The former Brownsville lounge and hotel is now the Historic Hampton House Cultural Center, thanks to founder Pinkney who spearheaded its reopening in 2015.
Directed by Academy award-winning actress Regina King, the story follows the four friends during the night of Feb. 25, 1964, after Clay’s upset victory over Sonny Liston, before the upstart changed his name to Muhammad Ali. The fight took place at the Miami Beach Convention but segregation precluded African Americans from staying nearby – even if they had just became heavyweight champion of the world. So X, Clay, Brown and Cooke headed eight miles west to the Hampton House, a high-end hotel for African Americans which also doubled as a place of refuge during times of racial animus, for a night of heated discourse.
“We had a place here in this community that was a first-class place that had air conditioning, that had a swimming pool,” Pinkney said. “... There was just pride
in this building because of its elegance.”
With limited access to luxury in the Jim Crow South, African-Americans spent their leisure time in Green Book-approved places like the Hampton House. King showcased this history with images of Black guests relaxing poolside and the unbridled glee on the faces of patrons at the hotel dining room, despite the racism awaiting them just outside the door. It’s also why, even in the film’s most tense moments, the four men always looked sharp inside the motel.
“It was very important that the men always look good in this room,” said King who will be making her film directorial debut with “One Night in Miami.” “And in order to do that, we took a big risk and completed the set at the last minute because we wanted to see each actor in front of different colors of wood to make sure that the choice complimented all four complexions.”
Looking good was a priority for anyone staying at the hotel. Visitors never knew who might be in town: one night it might be Jackie Robinson, the next Nat King Cole, another Sammy Davis Jr. Between its dazzling out-of-town clientele and its in-house jazz club, the Hampton House was once
a buzzing night-life spot for Miami’s in-crowd.
“The Hampton House was a bridge in the community that brought the community together, no matter what your race was or your color or your religion,” Pinkney said. “Wherever you came from, you were welcomed at the Hampton House.”
That was part of its mission when owners Harry and Florence Markowitz, a white Jewish couple, opened the Hampton House opened in 1961. The two-story motel closed sometime in the 1970s.
When it came to bringing the Hampton House to the screen, production designer Barry Robison told Architectural Digest that the film’s art department remade the hotel’s exterior at a Louisiana motel while the guest and dining room were made on the set.
“All of the sets were custom-made,” Robison said. “… We built the motel room from the ground up so that Regina (King) could have freedom of camera movement.”
That freedom – aided in part by some creative licensing in the form of making the motel room bigger than it would’ve been in 1964 – allowed King to better control the viewer’s emotions, she says.