Sparks really did fly at this Fourth of July party on a downtown rooftop

Isabel Rougeau was in the executive development program at Neiman Marcus in Dallas when she accepted the invitation from a long-time friend to come to Houston for a special Fourth of July party. 

Danny David, then a third-year associate at Baker Botts, and friends had organized the rooftop blow-out at Commerce Towers downtown high-rise. More than 1,000 patriotic revelers showed up. And, in that crowd, these two spotted one another and exchanged glances much of the night.

But they didn't speak until very late in the evening, in part because he thought that she (a beautiful blonde with exotic looks) was from Europe or Russia. Surely, he assumed, she didn't speak English. So he approached cautiously and asked, in what Danny describes as his best tourist English, "Who . . . are . . . you?" She responded in perfect English, "Who are you?" He was impressed with her linguistic abilities, still convinced that she was of distant origins.

"Once I recovered from the awkward introduction," Danny e-mailed, "we danced for a few songs, and then lingered in conversation overlooking downtown. Best night of my life . . . at least until our wedding."

It took two weeks for Danny to  pursue the "foreigner" from Dallas and ask her to come to Houston for dinner. He gallantly secured a room for her at Hotel Icon. And it wasn't until their first date that Danny learned that Isabel was, in fact, American with roots in Florida.

"To continue our semi-long-distance romance," Isabel e-mailed, "Danny planned incredible dates across the country and abroad." Talk about a romantic courtship!

They met in New Orleans for a foie gras dinner at the Windsor Court. They rendezvous-ed several times in Los Angeles, met in New York, traveled to Washington D.C. and, in 2004, spent two weeks together in Paris. After dating for another year, Isabel moved to Houston and on Valentine's Day, Danny took her to the Commerce Towers roof-top, where they had met, and he proposed.

The couple was married in December of 2007 on the beach at Las Ventanas al Paraiso in Los Cabos, Mexico. After a week sunning in Cabo, they changed clothes and headed to snowy Canada for skiing in the Banff Springs/Lake Louise area.

Today, she is associate publisher of Houston magazine and he is a partner at Baker Botts. They still live in Danny's original apartment in Commerce Towers but they are expanding to a second unit just as their family is expanding. The Davids are expecting a baby boy at the end of May. 

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