Leap day date starts couple on lifetime together
Long before Todd Yakoubian made the leap from KATV to chief meteorologist at KARK, he and Andria Durden had a leap day first date.
Todd had breezed into Andria’s office for an introduction on his first day on the job at WRCB-TV in Chattanooga, Tenn., in summer 1999.
“I was given a tour of the whole station and I met everybody,” he says. “I remember the lady’s name was Becky Swanson and she took me to the production department, and they introduced me to Andria and I shook her hand. And then we walked out into the hallway and I said, ‘Who’s the hot blonde?’ That’s how we met.”
Andria was busy when Todd was introduced, but she said a quick hello and welcome.
“They were bringing people through all the time,” she says. “I remember a day his mom called and accidentally got me, and I had to look up his phone number on a list.”
She recognized the name as belonging to someone who worked in the building. But, she says, “He had not stood out to me yet.”
“I pulled out a Rolodex card to write on, and I wrote Todd Jablowski. That was in my Rolodex until the day we got married,” Andria says.
Their co-workers knew Todd was interested in Andria and began putting in good words for him where they could. Andria was seeing someone, so she largely ignored their prodding.
“Then that relationship was faltering and I said, ‘Have him call me,’” she says. “Well, he never did.”
Eventually, she got tired of waiting and she picked up the phone and dialed his number.
“The Caller ID on the phone said Durden, AL,” Todd says.
Andria’s maiden name, of
course, is Durden, and her first two initials are A and L, for Andria Louise.
“I thought, ‘I don’t know anybody in Durden, Alabama,” says Todd, who considered not answering. He was glad he did.
They made plans to go to Outback Steakhouse on Feb. 29 — leap year day.
Andria had spent that day on jury duty, and afterward she had to finish work on a 30-minute kids show she was producing. She had barely enough time to run home and change clothes before their date.
“When she showed up, her blonde curly hair was everywhere,” Todd says. “I just remember the crazy blonde hair, but I liked it.”
They had a few more dates, including making dinner together.
“He told me I cooked spaghetti wrong,” she says. “I said, ‘My way is not wrong,’ but everybody has their own little
way of making spaghetti.”
Shortly after that date, Todd left for a ski trip in Montana.
“I picked him up from the airport when he got back from Montana and my memory is we were together from there on out, most every day,” Andria says.
They did the typical Chattanooga things, like walking the Walnut Street Bridge and
hanging out in Coolidge Park.
Todd worked weekends then, and Andria and worked a regular 9-5 weekday schedule, but they found time to be together.
On Dec. 23, Todd arranged for their friends to meet them at a Tex-Mex restaurant in downtown Chattanooga. Andria was unaware of that plan; she thought they were meeting friends at the Chattanooga Choo Choo.
“I took her to the Chattanooga Choo Choo gardens,” he says. “I remember getting to the pavilion in the middle of the garden — that’s where I was going to propose — and there were some people around and so I had to wait for them.”
He stalled by looking around and wondering aloud where the friends — who were never actually going to meet them there — might be. Andria had mentioned months earlier that this would be the perfect place for a proposal or a wedding. Todd was listening and intended to make that happen.
When the group in the pavilion finally left, he led her into the pavilion and asked if she would marry him.
“I had arranged for a horse and carriage ride to take us from the Chattanooga Choo Choo gardens to that restaurant where all of our mutual friends met us to celebrate,” Todd says.
The gathering was a bonus. Andria had initially thought they would just ride back and forth in the carriage.
“It was Christmas time and downtown Chattanooga is decorated with all these Christmas lights, so that was really nice,” he says.
They were married on April 12, 2003, at Christ the King Catholic Church in Little Rock, Todd’s hometown.
They honeymooned for a week on the coast of Maine, in a condo overlooking the ocean.
Todd and Andria moved to Little Rock in 2005, when he joined KATV. He gives her credit for his career success.
“The ingredient in our marriage and my career is that she understands that doing the weather is not a 9-5 job,” he says, remembering that she got a taste of that right after they started dating, when there were thunderstorms on her birthday and he had to stay at work. “She understands that
if I’m going to have success in my career I’m not going to be there sometimes, at weird hours.”