The (second) love story of Yong Nieva and Ivy Almario

As modern love stories go, this one is all about second chances. Or, to be more specific, about second marriages — another shot at love, happiness and family life. 

Interior designer Ivy Almario and restaurateur Yong Nieva were married in Catholic ceremonies on Dec. 1 last year at the Montecito Chapel in Sta. Rosa, Laguna. A string quartet played in the courtyard and cocktails were served before Mass.

When Ivy entered the church, Yong thought to himself, “Ivy has never looked prettier, more ravishing or happier… and I felt like I was just peaking.”

Yong left the altar and ran to her, telling the priest, “Father, I have to kiss her now. After all, she has been my wife for 13 years.”

Not everybody knows, in fact, that the couple had already tied the knot 13 years ago in civil rites in Napa Valley, California with, just 20 guests — after only a six-month romance. 

The marriage for both is their second one. Ivy was previously married to architect Conrad Onglao for 13 years and with whom she has two sons, Kenji and Mikey, while Yong was married to a Filipino-American with whom he also has two children.

Ivy and Yong’s love story — or the way they tell it — doesn’t run on a straight line. There are some detours, near misses, and a very dramatic backstory (especially for Ivy), so when they sit down to tell it, it is almost like a movie involving a cast of hundreds, of well-meaning friends, lovers, mistresses, loyal sisters and brothers.

Or as Ivy puts it, during and after the breakup of her marriage with Conrad and largely for the sake of their children’s schooling, The zarzuela had to continue, even if it was clear that Conrad and I were not compatible, but he was an excellent provider for his children.” 

A night in December, in the year that she finally decided that enough was enough in her marriage, is a good start for this story. It had been months since she and her husband had finally separated for good but, of course, Ivy was still depressed.

“I broke up with Conrad in July of 1995,” she says. “In December, I was still crying. At the time, my sister Cynthia’s boyfriend, who is now her husband, was my houseguest, visiting from Mauritius. He said, ‘I’m sure if you want to get back with Conrad the family will understand instead of you crying in your own house.

“I said, ‘No, I’m just crying because it’s Christmas and my family is broken. I’m just mourning the fact that when families should be together, mine is not. For Filipinos especially, a marital breakup is devastating. It’s so numbing.

“Two weeks later, right before Christmas, my friend Marut Gonzales called me up and said, ‘Ivy, I met this guy, he’s half-Chinese and British, but there is no chemistry between us. Parang he’s so bagay to you. Why don’t you go out with him since we’re going out tonight.”

“I said I wasn’t even thinking of dating, but she was persistent. She called up again and said, ‘What if I brought him to your house, and I cooked dinner there?’ I said, ‘The maids are off (being a Sunday), but if you want to cook dinner here, my house is your house. But I may just be in my bedroom asleep.’”

Being a typical woman who is depressed, Ivy began cleaning the house. By 7:30 p.m. her four guests had arrived — and she was already asleep.

By 9.30, her friend Marut woke her up and said they were done with dinner, would she — the woman of the house —  join them for dessert? Ivy shook her head — and went back to sleep.

“At around midnight, she tells  me, ‘You need to wake up, it’s your ex-sister-in-law from Los Angeles, she needs to talk to you on the phone.”

So Ivy went out of the room and before she even saw John, the guy they were setting her up with, she heard his voice.

“I heard him speak in that cultured, British voice. I thought, ‘Putcha, tinulugan ko ‘to? So after talking on the phone, I went back to my bedroom and put on lipstick. I just wanted to match the voice to the face. So I went to John and said, ‘Hi, my name is Ivy. I’m the second part of the program.’

“It was love at first sight for the two of us,” Ivy says. “There’s nothing like a second person to cure your heartbreak. When I was in love with John, and I would see Conrad and his newfound girlfriend in social events, I would feel nothing anymore.”

Ivy went out with John for three years. “He was in Hong Kong, I was in Manila. It worked out for me, because I didn’t want to date anyone local to avoid controversy. When I dated him, the first thing I told him was, ‘John, I am three — I am Ivy, Kenji and Mikey. We are a package deal.’ The relationship was good for him, too. I encouraged him to take up flying and he found a second career;  he was a former investment banker and got bored.”

“My life in HK was lunch at the country club, tea at the Ritz and shop in the evening. What I liked about John was that he was my rock while I was going through the contentious battle for custody of children and separation of assets with Conrad. As a banker, he taught me to wear a poker face through negotiations. It was solid, but I noticed there was no amor between him and Kenj, who was then nine or 10, but he loved Mikey, the little one, they would have pillow fights and all.”

At one of her regular visits to Hong Kong, they broke up. “However, there was one thing I learned from my first marriage,” she says. “I promised him I would stay there for seven days. We would talk about it every single day, so that on the seventh day, if we broke up, I knew it was over. So I said goodbye to that life.”

Enter two common friends of Ivy and Yong — Pedro and Gina Roxas. Yong knew them from Gina’s uncle who was his best friend; Ivy knew them from when she still shared a design firm with her ex-husband.

When Conrad and Ivy broke up, they had to sit down with clients and ask them to choose between the two of them. The clients that stayed with her were Pedro and Gina Roxas, Tony Gonzalez, Vivian Ng; and some of the clients that stayed with Conrad were the Panililios and Doris Ho. These were all ongoing projects at the time.

Three months after Ivy and John broke up, she “was batong bato na. I told Gina, ‘Hey Gina, introduce me naman to a guy in Manila who will never break my heart.’ She said, ‘I know one!’”

It turned out Gina meant Yong, who is seven years older than Ivy.

So, Yong Nieva, newly returned from the US, also coming from a divorce, now had Ivy’s number. 

“I wasn’t really dating for three years after my divorce,” says Yong.  “I was doing some business, a small construction company and one of our clients was Santi’s. They told me, if I wanted to open a deli they would consign their goods to us. Chef Melissa Sison, who  was arriving from Switzerland, became our partner.

“We were constructing our restaurant Salumeria and Gina called me up saying she wanted to set me up on a blind date. This was July 1998.  So I asked around, who is Ivy Almario? I spent 15 years in the States, I didn’t know people here anymore, except for my ex girlfriends.

“There was this lady who owned a fabric store and I asked her, ‘Do you know this Ivy coz she’s being set up with me? She said, yeah, may boyfriend yan na Chinese-British. So tinapon ko yung number. That was July. By December, Gina called me up and said, ‘Yong you haven’t called up my friend.’ I said I was told she has a boyfriend.” 

Then Yong got a call from Ivy. “She said, ‘Hi, I’m Ivy, the friend of Gina. I’m only calling because I heard from Gina that you said I have a boyfriend.’ She said she wanted to clear that she did have a boyfriend but when Gina gave me her number they had already broken up.”

Ivy says, “I was embarrassed for Gina, because here I was asking her for a date and the guy was told I had a boyfriend!”

So Yong told Ivy, “In that case, can I have your number?”

Ivy said, “No, you’ve already passed the statute of limitation. Don’t call me, I’ll call you.”

Yong said, “Oh, I like you already!”

After one failed attempt, they finally set up a date for a “meeting” — not yet a date, but a meeting at Salumeria. It went well enough to merit a first date.

They ended up at Chili’s and talked nonstop for three hours.

Ivy says, “On our first date he held my hand. Me naman, I thought, ganito na pala ngayon. Sa tanda kong to kung papalag pa ako ang baduy naman!”

When Ivy got home, her mother asked, “So how was your date?”

Ivy says, “I said, ‘Mom okay, he’s like a bro, he’s like an Almario.” I felt like he would belong with my family, happy to be with us.”

There is something to be said of the Almario sisters — Cynthia and Ivy, particularly — they are inseparable, they know how to have a good time, they like to laugh, and their loyalty and  love for each other is fierce. 

So when Ivy says “he’s like an Almario,” it means a lot.

Yong says, “I thought I was already coming from a loving family, but the Almario sisters taught me more how to love. If you’re not used to this kind of family, you will tell yourself, ‘Why is everybody happy?’”

One more thing Ivy liked about him was that on their first date, he told her he loved being married, but just that something happened in his marriage and they divorced. “What I liked about what he said was that he was happy being married because he saw his parents happily married, talking early morning in bed. I thought he was a keeper. It was very rare for a person to share that it just didn’t work out the first time but he wasn’t turned off by the institution of marriage. In fact, he loved being married.”

Right from the first date, they both say, they were already serious about the relationship. Ivy was 40, Yong was 47.

And what about Ivy’s sons? “The first time my son Kenji met him, he took Yong’s hand and wouldn’t let go. Needless to say, Yong fell head over heels in love with Mikey, too, and so the pillow fights continued from John to Yong, but the difference was Kenji fell in love with Yong, and Yong was not afraid of the challenge.”

“We were really happy and serious about each other right away,” says Yong. 

Ivy says, “I was in the position to see two different marriages and I am the same person. One marriage was difficult, the other one was a walk in the park. Yun pala it’s a matter of being married to the right person.” 

Six months after their first date, they got married in Napa Valley and 13 years later in a church in Nuvali.

Yong says, “God fills everything up. The kids made me feel needed and they are so easy to love. Ivy raised them in South Bay with the extended family, and these are two boys who are able to express themselves, how they are feeling. So it was easy to bond with the kids.”

“Conrad and I are good, responsible parents, we made sure they went to the best schools,” Ivy says. “I promised myself, my next husband would be someone who can teach my children how to love a woman. It was something John could never deliver, and something I saw that Yong, just being who he is —  he adored and cherished me and it was an uncomplicated and simple love — that if my children grew up around this I would hope that my daughters-in-law would fare better than me because this is already their comfort level.”