WASHINGTON – Mick Burke is an Irish bartender at the Irish Channel, an Irish bar only blocks from Capital One Arena, home of the Washington Capitals and Washington Wizards.
Neither of those is Mick's favorite team, though. That would be the Buffalo Bills. He has no choice, really. The woman he loves loves the Bills, and she told him early on he would have to love them, too.
And so he does.
This is a St. Patrick's Day story with the makings of a shamrock-green rom-com. One night, a year ago, Alex Ptachick walked into the Irish Channel after a Caps game. She asked a friend who the cute bartender was. When they met, she liked his brogue right away.
"Are you Australian?" she asked.
"Stupid American," he said with a laugh. "You're in an Irish pub, aren't you?"
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"Oh, you're Irish!" she said. And they both cracked up.
In the movies, that would be called a meet-cute. Think Hugh Grant spilling juice on Julia Roberts when he runs into her (literally) on the sidewalk in "Notting Hill." (Wait. Hugh Grant is British. Never mind.)
St. Pat's Couple
Alex Ptachick and Mick Burke ... and friend
We are speaking by phone with Alex stateside and Mick in his hometown of Swords, a suburb 10 kilometers north of Dublin. (Alex shouldn't stop at the Bills; being from Swords, Mick would surely like the Sabres, too.)
"Yes, he is Irish,” says Alex, senior director of new content initiatives for the Hearst newspapers. "I guess I should have deduced that."
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They'll spend St. Paddy's Day apart, but Mick will be back by the end of the month. His uncle owns the Irish Channel, which happens to be a hangout for hockey writers, as the Swannie House once was in Buffalo.
"When she walked in that night," Mick says, "I caught her eyes. And I just thought – 'wow.' "
At closing time, he couldn't get an Uber to Silver Spring, the suburb in Maryland where he was staying, so she said she would order a ride to her home in Washington, and then he could add a stop. But the Uber driver would go only as far as her place. They ordered another Uber – this one willing to go to Silver Spring – and Alex let Mick wait inside for a bit because it was cold. Soon, the car arrived, and off he went.
The next morning Alex got a phone call. She is of the generation that much prefers texting to talking, but she answered it anyway.
"He pretended he had left his key at my house," she says.
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"But I did misplace my key," he protests.
The woman who dislikes phone calls talked with Mick for an hour. He invited her to a Zach Bryan concert. She said yes, but then he couldn't get tickets, so they went out to dinner instead. Weeks later, when they went back to the same steakhouse, Alex looked at the wine list and realized that the Italian wine she had ordered on their first date was $250, not $25.
"I gasped," she says. "I asked, 'Did I order a $250 bottle of wine the first time?' "
" 'And you asked me out again?’ "
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The movie script writes itself.
Her Havanese dog is Harper, named for Bryce Harper when he played baseball for the Washington Nationals. She calls him Harp – and, begorrah, a golden harp is the emblem of Ireland.
Alex grew up in Williamsburg, Va., home of William & Mary, where the colors are, yes, green and gold – and where her brother played football with Joe Brady, now the Bills’ offensive coordinator. (Her father played there, too, in an era before Sean McDermott did.)
Alex's father and mother are originally from Amsterdam, N.Y., and her father raised their Virginia kids to love the Bills, just as his father had raised him.
"There was no option," Alex says. "We had to be Bills fans.”
She advised Mick he would have to be one, too. This was two weeks into their relationship.
"She said, 'If you're going to be with me, we're going to be watching the Bills on Sundays,' " Mick says.
"I did make it very clear," Alex says. "If he wanted to have any fun on Sundays, a day we both have off, he needed to be a Bills fan."
It wasn't a hard sell. Mick found he liked this American football – and he quickly loved the Bills. Now he cheers the cheers (Let's go, Buff-a-lo!) and drinks the beers (Labatt Blue and Blue Light).
"I don't think you choose the Bills," Mick says. "I think the Bills choose you."
Alex's surname is Czech. "But Ptachick," Mick says, "is close to Patrick."
Most rom-coms can be summed up as boy meets girl. This one is boy meets girl – and girl's team.
Cue the music for the closing credits.
Make it "Shout."
And play it on a golden harp.
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