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ON September 11 2001, 32-year-old investment banker Andy O'Grady died trying to escape from the World Trade Center. His fiancee, Rachel Uchitel, 30, a TV news producer, thought she would never find love again.
Andy was watching the weather channel when I handed him the photographs I’d just developed from our recent trip to Greece.
He wanted to take them to show people at his office, the investment bank Sandler O’Neill and Partners, where he was a managing director.
It was on the 10th floor of the World Trade Center. I had a funny feeling he was going to lose the pictures so I asked him to give me the negatives first. How could I have known they’d be the last pictures ever taken of us together?
I grabbed my keys and left for work at 5:00am without even kissing him goodbye.
Shortly after the first plane hit the north tower, Andy called and said, “Rachel, I’m watching people either jump or get pushed out of the window.”
Although he sounded frantic, I never thought he was in any danger — it wasn’t his building that was on fire. In fact, since Andy had such a great bird’s eye view of what was happening, he was telling me what he could see and I was passing it on to our anchor at Bloomberg Financial News, who was reporting the story on TV.
Out of curiosity, and not because I was concerned about Andy’s safety, I asked him if his building was being evacuated. He told me it wasn’t, but as time went on he became more distraught. The last thing he said to me was: “I’ve got to get out of here.”
On the monitor moments later, I watched as the second plane slammed into the south tower. Now, reporters were referring to the story as an act of terrorism. I began to panic as I dialled Andy’s phone number. When he didn’t pick up, I tried to email him. Nothing.
I knew it was Andy’s building that had collapsed because he always used to tell me: “I work in the one without the steeple on it.”
I was numb with shock. I remember falling to the floor and thinking: “There’s no way he’s going to be dead. This can’t be my life. I’m not going to be that girl who loses her fiancé in the World Trade Center.”
I stayed at work until 5:00pm that day, wanting to be where the most up-to-the-minute news was being reported.
When I got back home, I looked at the pillow he’d slept on the night before, a pair of socks, the underwear he’d left near the hamper in the bathroom after getting into the shower.
For the next 36 hours, I did nothing but sit by the telephone and stare at the front door, waiting for Andy to come home. As the minutes grew longer, I knew there was less and less chance of him returning. I just cried and screamed in desperation.
My mother gave me Valium to calm my nerves. I simply couldn’t believe what was happening. After seeing people on TV gathering at hospitals and putting up flyers I decided to do the same.
On Thursday, September 13, I went to Manhattan’s Bellevue Hospital. I was in a total daze.
Soon, a bunch of photographers approached me and asked me who I was looking for. The next thing I knew I was on the cover of every newspaper in the world. It was good to have my most vulnerable moment photographed like that because it meant people wanted to know who Andy was, they wanted to help find him. Receiving hundreds of letters of support made me feel as if I wasn’t going through this alone.
Andy’s body was discovered on New Year’s Eve. I called the morgue’s office, trying to put the pieces together and figure out how he was killed. When they wouldn’t release any details I became hysterical. All I know is that his cause of death was due to blunt trauma, which basically means he was hit by something.
How could something that started out brilliantly end so badly? Andy and I often used to laugh about how we met. In fact, he loved telling the story.
In September 1998, friends set us up on a blind date. Before we’d even had a chance to go for dinner, he called me at work and offered to give me a lift home. I thought it was a really sweet thing to do, but I later discovered he just wanted to check me out before he committed to a date! I turned the lift down anyway, because I had a really bad outfit on that day. Undeterred, Andy showed up at my apartment that evening with ginger ale and bagels.
Andy’s funeral was on January 18, 2002 and for the next 18 months I was really strong. He’d taught me to create a foundation for myself so that if anything ever happened to him, I could stand on my own. It was a very big thing for him. He would often tell me, “I don’t want you to need me, I want you to want me around.”
In July 2003, I took a leave of absence from Bloomberg — the events of September 11 had finally caught up with me. I was suffering from Post-traumatic Stress Disorder.
By October 2003, after having sought therapy, I was finally able to say goodbye to my past and to Andy. It was at this time that I ran into an old childhood friend, Steven Ehrenkranz, 30, a trader on the New York Stock Exchange. We bumped into each other at a Halloween Party.
We’d known each other since our school days, at the age of 12. Steven said he’d read about what happened to me in the New York Post and that he was sorry. He later told me that he’d been in the north tower of the World Trade Center on the morning of September 11, interviewing for a job with a brokerage firm, shortly before the first plane hit. All the guys who he’d been interviewed with were now dead.
After the party, we quickly became best friends. Steven would come over every day to watch TV or our all-time favourite film, Serendipity, or he’d help me walk my two dogs, Rudy and Ozzie.
I always thought Steven had an amazing personality. He was so funny, so confident, so generous — and I remember thinking: “The girl who ends up catching his eye and heart will be the luckiest girl in the world.” It never occurred to me that I might be that girl.
Early in 2004 Steven asked me, “Don’t you think it’s weird that I’d rather be with you than with the girl I’m dating?” I answered: “No, I think we have a really great friendship.”
When he suggested we try dating, my initial thought was, “No way.” I wasn’t sure if I could be physically attracted to someone I’d known for so long, but secretly I was thinking: “Why can’t I find someone I connect with like Steven?” Inevitably, all the guys I’d been attracted to turned out to be losers. And since I knew, deep down, Steven was the type of person I wanted to be with, we started dating.
Over Valentine’s Day weekend Steven told me he loved me. I wasn’t surprised because I already knew he loved me as a friend; we were so close, I knew he’d do anything for me. When we got together, I remember telling him, “If we’re going to take this step and risk our friendship, you’d better be prepared to marry me.” I didn’t want to have to go through the heartache of losing my best friend just because we wanted to try sleeping together.
In May, almost two years to the day Andy and I were to marry, and one month after Steven and I met, we moved in together. Things might’ve been happening very quickly between us, but in my heart I felt that it was right.
We married on November 20, 2004. It was an interfaith ceremony — Steven’s family is Jewish, mine is Presbyterian. I had eight bridesmaids who carried candles, as opposed to bouquets, and placed them under the canopy where we stood. On that day I felt so lucky and so incredibly happy that, despite losing Andy, I had been able to find someone else whom I could love.
I believe Steven was hand-picked to survive that day so that he could be there for me. Andy would have liked Steven. They share so many amazing qualities. In fact, I often feel as if Steven and Andy were made from the same mould.
I don’t feel bad about having found love again. I try not to think about whether or not this chain of events was meant to be. I’ve made the decision to love and be with Steven for as long as I’m around.
I’d like to start working again, maybe set up my own company. Perhaps in a year or two I’ll fall pregnant. All I know is that I’m going to try and make the most of my life.
GLAMOUR MAGAZINE
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Published on: Sunday, 11th September, 2005
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