Barbara Tatge’s first Boston Marathon sure was eventful.
First, there was a mid-marathon kiss with a stranger, then a viral search, and finally a letter from the guy’s wife.
Tatge, a cancer survivor from Tennessee, made good on her daughter’s bet while running the race last month: she found an attractive man on the Wellesley stretch of the route and planted a kiss on him. Then, as chronicled in the Wellesley Townsman, her daughter, Paige, launched a quest to find the man online. Paige had reached out to the paper in the hopes of finding the mystery man; she had a photo of her mom kissing the guy. They got a response. Not from the man, but his wife, who wrote to the paper.
“When this story aired on the news we were pretty surprised,” wrote the wife, who went unnamed. “For me, I’m not mad. Believe me, our friends have gotten a lot of mileage out of this story and I have thoroughly enjoyed watching them give my husband grief.” She added, “I greatly admire your spunk and courage and wish you many happy races in the future. Congratulations!”
Tatge for her part, apologized if the “media firestorm” caused him “any discomfort.”
“I accepted my daughter’s good hearted dare of reversing the Wellesley tradition,” Tatge told the Townsman.
“For me, I’m not mad.” Woman kisses stranger at #BostonMarathon, gets a letter from his wife: http://t.co/2bbTckEzov pic.twitter.com/Pz0Rsu3T08
— 8News WRIC Richmond (@8NEWS) May 4, 2015
