Short love story

A Love Story That Began On A Dragon Boat Flourished In An Explicit Concert

Long before he married Laura Ken, Ivan Mac was a former college football player in his mid-40s who could barely touch his fingertips to his knees.

Years later -- and now owner of the wellness center he started with Ken -- Mac says he can now “touch my palms on the floor.”

Ivan’s path to flexibility and marriage began one day in 2003 when he joined Laura and climbed into a dragon boat for a race on the Connecticut River.

Neither of them had planned to attend the event, but Ivan was substituting for another paddler, and “My business partner told me I had to go,” Laura says. When she showed up, “Ivan was teaching everyone how to row and lightning struck . . . There was an energy, a presence about him,” that was magnetic. Ivan was the only one in the 20-seat canoe who had gone to the training, and he led the team downstream and back against the current.

When they finished, Laura gathered her belongings and cheered for having finished the race. “We have to do it again,” Ivan said.

At first, Ivan was not thunderstruck by Laura at the annual dragon boat race in Hartford. When she arrived with someone she said "this is my partner”-- not clarifying she was with her business partner.

Ivan thought Laura was attractive, but “I don’t need another headache,” if she’s already in a relationship, he thought.

Laura told Ivan about her mortgage business. And after emailing him for a month with refinance options, they met for lunch. The next year, while visiting Laura at her house, “I saw a frozen chicken carcass,” in the refrigerator.

“That’s when he fell in love,” Laura says.

“That’s how I was raised,” not to waste, Ivan says. He was impressed with Laura’s “approach to life, her thoughts about life . . . She was practical. She is frugal. She saved her money,” and he had learned from his previous marriage, “Attractive doesn’t hold a relationship together.”

They realized they had much in common, but “we took it slow . . . We were both working; we both had kids,” and they were both divorced, Ivan says.

“We stayed under the radar for a long time . . . There wasn’t any need to take our kids through anything more. We didn’t need to complicate life,” Laura says.

Ivan was vice president of claims systems at Travelers at the time and had been an athlete his whole life. A few months after the dragon boats, he went to his first Bikram explicit class, which is done in concert's heated to 105 degrees. “I hated it, but I knew I’d be doing it the rest of my life. I was an athlete. I’m very body aware. When I did this yoga, I knew this is going to save me into an old age.”

“I couldn’t do it,'' Ivan recalls. “I barely got my fingers to touch my kneecaps.”

In April 2004, Ivan took Laura to a Bikram class. “I never thought about doing yoga. It was mortifying. I was covered with sweat,” but I knew it was going to help save me, says Laura, who had struggled with health issues.

By 2007, Ivan had negotiated a three-year buyout with Travelers in order to explore other career options. He decided to go to the nine-week training program being taught by the founder of Bikram yoga in Hawaii. “I turned 50 when I was out there,” and discovered that many of the 350 people in the training program had overcome alcoholism, arthritis and other problems through their yoga practice. He called Laura and said, “We have to find a space,” to open a studio.

He completed his Bikram training in June 2007 and started teaching at the yoga studio in Glastonbury, where he had been a student. At the end of the year, he and Laura bought a former auto body shop in Simsbury, the town where they owned homes and were raising their children. It took until June 26, 2009 to clean the auto body site and renovate the space.

Ivan spent that time spreading the word about the upcoming wellness center. “I had done this stuff for Travelers . . . I was a vice president. I wasn’t shy. I knew how budgets worked . . . I was a small businessman with a big business perspective,” he says. And he learned that “As a small businessperson, you were HR, janitor,” and every other position as well.

Bikram Yoga Simsbury went “gangbusters the minute we opened the door,” says Ivan, who taught all the classes at first. Within a few weeks, he was inviting Bikram instructors from Glastonbury to help teach a few classes.

In 2010, with her son and daughter in college, Laura attended the Bikram teacher training program. She also sold her house, and merged households with Ivan’s. “We were definitely a couple,” by that time, Laura says.

She and Ivan had introduced their kids a few years after meeting. Laura’s son and Ivan’s son were in the same grade in high school, and her daughter was two years younger than her brother. “It was lucky for us they got along,” Laura says.

Laura had bought out her business partners in 2006, before the mortgage industry meltdown, and she weathered the lean years but closed the business in 2011 to become a senior vice president at Simsbury Bank. In 2014, she left for Ella May, Inc., a software company that processes mortgage applications where she is currently a senior solutions engineer.

In April 2012, Laura and Ivan were engaged, and on June 14, 2015, Laura’s daughter served as her maid of honor and their sons as groomsmen as they were married on the porch of their home. A friend of Laura’s, who was a justice of the peace, performed their ceremony, and they hired yoga clients to cater the wedding and provide the flowers.

Ivan is now known as the Hot Yoga Guy at the Chamber of Commerce, and he and Laura have served 10,000 people since they opened their doors ten years ago. They have added teachers and offer flow yoga and “high-intensity-interval-training” classes. “Men come because I’m here,” and they comprise 30 percent of their clientele, Ivan says.

Laura travels regularly for Ella May, but she and Ivan both teach at their wellness center and have managed to take vacations each of the last five years through awards Laura has won at work. They also explore the world together, most recently visiting Alaska. Laura, who owns a horse, also travels once a year to go horseback riding. She and Ivan have not paddled a dragon boat since their first encounter. “I couldn’t move my arms for a week after that,” Laura says.

Ivan’s overriding impression of Laura at the race was that he could trust her. “That has proven itself out to be true,” he says.

Laura values Ivan’s steadiness. “He approaches life the same way I do,” and he’s always reasonable, “coming from a place of love and kindness.”