Holding out for a hero

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An online encounter led to a deeper connection for Kaye Menadue and Brad Taylor, and both found that love is worth the wait.

Kaye Menadue smiles as she remembers the tagline, ‘Holding out for a hero!’, she chose for her profile on match.com, an internet dating agency. She admits she wasn’t really expecting to find one, but her brothers had coerced the 36-year-old South Australian primary school teacher into registering. “My youngest brother met his wife through the website, but I didn’t really think it would do anything for me,” Kaye remembers. “I guess I hoped that something would happen, but I didn’t want to set myself up for disappointment.”

Meanwhile, on the other side of Adelaide, Brad Taylor had also been logging on to match.com. Brad had nine months of online chatting under his belt and, although he hadn’t come across a soul mate, he had made countless friends. Brad had been plagued by illness throughout his childhood, so there hadn’t been much time for making friends, let alone girlfriends. “By the time I was well enough to have a social life I was thirty years old,” he explains. “I could finally go to pubs and clubs, but I had no social skills. I hadn’t learned that sort of thing.”

Now 41, Brad had been diagnosed with chronic cystic fibrosis when he was just a baby. “Back then, if you were chronic, doctors thought it was a waste of time and money to try to treat you. I wasn’t expected to survive,” he says. “When I was six I was still kicking, but my lungs were a lot worse and I realised that I would be dead by the age of ten. I was angry that I was going to die young – I wanted to play sport and do all the other things normal kids do. So when I turned seven, my birthday wish was to be around one day when there was a cure or some form of treatment.”

Brad defied the odds and made it to his 24th birthday, but his lungs were only working at 24 per cent capacity and he had heart failure on the right side of his heart. When a doctor told him he had six months to live, Brad knew he was running out of borrowed time. He agreed to be assessed for a heart-lung transplant and underwent a series of tests, which were dangerous, as his organs were already incredibly weak.

But there was a light at the end of the tunnel: on 1 March 1990, Brad made the headlines as Australia’s first domino heart-lung transplant. A domino transplant involves a donor’s heart and lungs being transplanted into a second person whose heart, in turn, is transplanted into a third person (although Brad’s heart was damaged, it would improve if matched with a good set of lungs). Even though the transplant was a success, Brad was only given a 60 per cent chance of surviving for five years, but having beaten the odds so many times before, he chose to ignore the latest forecast.

“I’ve done lots of things since the transplant,” Brad grins. “Thirteen City-Bay Fun Runs, parasailing, skydiving, playing golf and working as a motivational speaker.” He’s also participated in five National Transplant Games, winning 28 medals, and represented Australia in the World Transplant Games in Sydney in 1997. He celebrated 10 years post-transplant by being a torchbearer for the Sydney Olympic Games, and won the Rising Star Award from the South Australian Chapter of the National Speakers Association of Australia in 1998.

Kaye’s tagline on match.com was a magnet for Brad. He immediately shot off an email to her, adding a link to his business website (www.believeyourdream.com) so she could see that he was a decent, upstanding sort of guy, and a motivational speaker to boot. “It was a good thing I added that link, because Kaye thought I was a creep when she saw my photo on match.com,” he laughs.

“I didn’t say that! But it certainly wasn’t the most attractive photo of him,” Kaye admits. “Brad’s so photogenic – you see pictures of him and he’s really gorgeous, but the one on match.com was a bit dodgy.”

Brad’s email arrived just in the nick of time, as Kaye had decided that after three months on the website she’d had enough. “It was a bit of a roller-coaster,” she says. “I’d talk to someone and think they were really nice, then they’d just disappear.” Kaye was planning to give up the online dating game when the school term came to an end, but soon after she had made up her mind to call it quits she received Brad’s email and couldn’t resist giving him a chance.

They began emailing regularly and chatting on MSN Messenger as well. “You get a sense of a person from the way they write,” says Kaye, “and I loved the language that Brad used.” Three weeks after Brad’s first email, they agreed to meet at a cafe in Adelaide’s beachside suburb of Glenelg. First date nerves aside, things were going well until Brad asked Kaye if she wanted to share a bowl of potato wedges for dinner. Alarm bells sounded in Kaye’s head – she couldn’t believe he was suggesting they have wedges for dinner on their first date and she made a hasty exit.

Brad’s diet was a cause for concern – he’d grown up on a diet of bread and Vegemite, chips and pasties, while Kaye had grown up on salads and vegetables. “I’m stubborn,” says Brad, “but Kaye is trying to improve my diet. She made me eat grated carrot and turnip last week!”

When Kaye had recovered from the potato wedges incident, Brad suggested they go to the zoo for a second date. It seemed like a safe bet to him, but once again alarm bells were ringing for Kaye – her sister-in-law had told her about a disastrous date she’d had at the zoo with a guy she’d met on the internet. But Kaye agreed to go and, even though the day was wet and wintry, Brad’s laid-back and playful manner put her at ease and she had a wonderful time. After walking her to her car, he gave her a big hug and a kiss goodbye. “It was lovely,” Kaye recalls. “I can still remember the smell of his leather jacket when he hugged me.”

From then on, the two saw each other every weekend, but as Kaye found out more about Brad’s past, she became increasingly wary of becoming too attached. “Every time I saw him I’d think, ‘That’s it. I’m not seeing him again’. I didn’t want to get involved. It was too risky. I still wasn’t even sure about Brad. It wasn’t love at first sight – he just grew on me,” she says. “Like a fungus!” Brad laughs.

Three months passed, and while Kaye still wasn’t ready to admit she was in love, there was no doubt she was hooked on Brad. After watching him compete in the Adelaide Transplant Games, she remembers thinking, ‘This is my hero!’. “He has a great sense of fun and adventure,” she explains. “And we’re always out doing things – going for walks on the beach or in the botanic gardens, or visiting people. Plus, he makes me laugh. I didn’t laugh enough before I met him.”

When Brad was admitted to hospital last year with a blood infection, anaemia and total kidney failure, the couple had been seeing each other for exactly 12 months. “While he was in hospital, Brad organised a cake to celebrate our one-year anniversary – it was so sweet of him. I realised I was in love with him then, when I thought I was going to lose him,” she says.

“Poor Kaye, I put her through hell,” says Brad. “I didn’t know if I was Arthur or Martha, and when the doctors asked if I wanted to be brought back to life if anything went wrong, I was so freaked out I called her and asked her to come and see me.”

Although Kaye lives in Gawler, more than an hour’s drive from Adelaide, Brad was so sick he couldn’t bear for her to leave – she was giving him the strength he needed to keep on fighting. So Kaye ended up spending 12-hour days at the hospital, then driving home to Gawler late each night. It was an exhausting time for both of them, both mentally and physically. “But it was good for us in the end,” says Kaye, “because I realised how Brad felt about me, and how I felt about him.”

When Brad recovered, the relationship was on an entirely new level and he sensed it was ready to go one step further.

The next time they were at the shopping centre, he subtly guided Kaye towards the jewellers and before she knew it they were looking at engagement rings.

“We’d gone to the movies with a male friend of ours, who ended up wandering around behind us looking at rings!” she laughs. “The next day we went back and looked properly, without our poor friend having to trail along after us. We set a budget, then we found three rings we liked that were all over the budget. I let Brad choose.” She then sat back and waited until Brad was ready to pop the question.

For the rest of the story, pick up a copy of the September 06 issue of Notebook: magazine.

Romance rules

A new way of dating is taking over the world. Using the internet to meet your life partner has slowly gained in popularity and now, it seems, most singles are browsing the web in search of ‘the one’. As with any new phenomenon, some ground rules must apply. Ideally, conventional dating follows certain protocols – and so too must internet dating.

Internet dating etiquette

The ad: Writing a personal advertisement requires time and thought. The idea is to attract a potential life partner, so it is counter-productive to masquerade as something you’re not. Honesty is imperative. An ad should not be too long or talk about the past. The tone should be upbeat and intriguing.

The photograph: This is the most important aspect of internet dating. Potential dates will initially be attracted by the photo, so ensure you are looking your best. As the infamous book The Rules: Time-Tested Secrets for Capturing the Heart of Mr Right  (Warner Books, 1996) notes: “Take care of the product first – you! The better you look, the more desirable you are.”
Photos must be very clear -- out of focus, dark, fuzzy or angular shots are not acceptable. Endeavour to show your ‘real’ self; excessively stiff, formal and posed shots can be off-putting.

Contact: Anyone making contact with a potential date deserves the courtesy of a reply. If there is no reciprocal interest that is perfectly fine, but an acknowledgement of the effort, and in many cases, courage, the sender has taken should be mandatory. For people conducting email conversations, there should be a no-contact period of no more than three days. A longer period of time may create unnecessary insecurity and angst.

First date: Naturally it is up to the people involved to decide when they’re ready to meet in person, but waiting six weeks could be wise. This enables the people to get to know each other more before meeting. Always ensure the first meeting is in a public place; meeting someone for the first time can be daunting, and there are also safety issues to be considered. Meet for a drink first, that way, if it doesn’t go well you can say you have other plans without causing offense or embarrassment.

Go ‘Dutch’ on the first date to prevent unnecessary pressure on either side.

Words: Anna Scobie and Jenna Moore. Photography: Emma Brasier. Hair & make-up: Cherie Spisso.