A Cavalier romance

It isn’t that Stan Brown was cavalier about his courtship with Barbara Frankel , it’s just that she beat him to the punch.

Just one month after the two started dating, Barbara announced that they were engaged.

That was news to Stan, who was stretching out on the living room floor of Barbara’s house when he heard her answer the phone.

“It was a guy I knew and he asked me out,” she said. “I’m looking at Stan and I know what’s going on and we hadn’t discussed or done anything and I said to the guy on the phone, ‘I want you to know that you’re the first one to know that I’m engaged.”

“And then I put the phone down and I looked at Stan and I said, ‘Aren’t we?’”

Apparently, they were. And they needed to tell Barbara parents quickly because the gentleman who on the phone was calling from the Club and Barbara’s dad was also at the Club that night.

“Do you know what a yenta is? Well this guy was a male yenta,” Barbara said. “He knew all the gossip and spread it all over. My father was at the club and he didn’t know diddly at the time and I said, ‘Oh my god, I have to call my father.’”

Fortunately, Barbara’s parents approved and Stan and Barbara married five months later.

“It was crazy. It was absolutely crazy. It happened so fast,” Barbara said.

“It was kind of a whirlwind, I must admit,” Stan agreed. ““When I think back on it, it was a strange circumstance but it was great.”

This year, the Browns will celebrate their 67th wedding anniversary.

The milestone came quickly for them as they filled those years with parenting, travel, work and sports. Stan wasn’t at all cavalier about the sports he followed, though he did spend 20 years on the Cleveland basketball team’s staff.

“I was an athlete in high school and college and basketball was my favorite,” Stan said. “When I first got to Cleveland there was no basketball. I immediately got tickets to the Browns.”

Later, he heard that the Cincinnati Royals, a professional basketball team that boasted the likes of Oscar Robertson, was going to play 10 home games in Cleveland. He bought tickets to those games right away.

“They were the first row behind the bench,” he said. “Being right there, the man who sat right in front of me on the floor was a guy from the Plain Dealer newspaper who was responsible for all of this.”

The two got to talking and Stan mentioned that he was a dentist, which reminded the gentleman that they needed a team dentist for the Royals when they came to town. Stan agreed to take the position.

A year later, Cleveland got its own NBA franchise and that team also needed a team dentist. Stan had already bought season tickets and purchased stock in the upstart team. So, he was a natural to fill that spot. He said yes immediately when they offered him the position.

“That was quite a job. I had to attend the games because the NBA rules were that you had to have a dentist on premise. I was at every game and I got our three boys appointed ball boys. So it was a family affair,” Stan said.

So close were the Browns to the Cavaliers that players popped by often for dinner.

“I found out Austin Carr liked pasta with clam sauce so I made it and I invited him over for dinner one night,” Barbara said. “There was always somebody coming with him. I don’t think he ever came by himself. We had some of the best times with those guys around the table.”

Stan remembers Carr, a shooting guard fans called Mr. Cavalier, for other reasons.

“Austin Carr is the only athlete I ever had who had 32 perfect teeth,” he said.

Stan, Barbara and their four kids weren’t just sports fans, they were athletes themselves.

Barbara learned to play tennis from Gwyneth Thomas, who once held the Wimbledon record for longest point ever played.

“I was very lucky because I was plucked by the pro at our club and I was her time saver,” Barbara said. “Whenever she had any free time she would pick up the phone and call me. She never charged me a penny. Not a penny. We became really close.”

Following Stan’s retirement, the two leaned even harder into tennis and have been instrumental for the past 36 years in managing the recreational league schedules at Beach Place in Longboat Key, Florida.

These days they are the proud parents of four, grandparents of eight and great-grandparents of two.

Nearly seven decades after her spontaneous announcement, Barbara is still an advocate for carpe-ing the diem. She has some advice for young people just starting out.

“Take advantage of the things that are offered you because you never know how they might affect you,” she said. “That’s how you learn and how you grow.”