[“Nunca es tarde” es una serie sobre personas que van en pos de sus sueños a su propio paso].
Nancy Cardwell has made two big changes in her life. The first was leaving her job as an editor for a major New York newspaper to volunteer with Habitat for Humanity. The second was a bit more drastic: moving to Buenos Aires at the age of 62 following falling in love with tango… and with a tango dancer named Luis Gallardo.
Cardwell, now 75, started at The Wall Street Journal in 1969 and rose through the ranks to become the publication’s deputy editor, and the highest-ranking woman in the paper at the time. However, in the late 1980s, she was removed from the leadership as part of a restructuring of the main editorial positions and felt frustrated.
In August 1991, he was returning from a fishing trip in Montana when he got off the plane at LaGuardia airport, which was under construction and very hot. “It’s over,” she remembers her telling herself. “I’m out of here”.
He sold his apartment in New York and moved to Americus, Georgia (population 15,000), to work for the organization Habitat for Humanity. “You reach the pinnacle of your profession,” she recalled her saying to herself. “You don’t have to prove anything else. If you don’t want to do it anymore, don’t do it.”
She eventually moved to the East Coast and settled in Arlington, Virginia, where she began a career as a freelance book publisher. At the age of 58, she was invited to a tango event which she reluctantly attended. Six months later she was taking tango classes five times a week. She celebrated her 60th birthday with a trip to Buenos Aires, where she danced tango and practiced her Spanish. She went back once more and once more and each trip dragged on a little longer. She would hire a “taxi dancer” —a professional tango dancer who would take her to the milongas— and she would stay dancing until 3 a.m.
One night she was approached by Luis, whom she had already seen on the dance floor. They continued to meet and dance in various milongas until the end of their journey. He asked her to write to him (she had taken out an email account for her just so she might write to him) and, one day, she received a message where he asked her when she would return to Argentina. She came back in November and they were dancing when he told her, “I think you’re going to be one of the greatest loves of my life.” The following year she moved to Argentina. They got married in 2014 and now divide their time between Arlington and Buenos Aires.
They still dance at least three times a week.
The following interview has been edited and condensed.
What is the particular attraction of tango?
Tango is a dance of leading and following, it is like a conversation. It’s intimate rather than sexy. Before I met Luis I started telling people: “90 percent of what I want from a man I get on the dance floor”. Tango taught me that intimacy does not require duration. The length of three minutes of a tango is enough. He learned that Argentines call tango love for three minutes”.
What did you think of being single before you met Luis?
You are raised with the idea that you will be in a couple or married, but I just refused to accept that being single was not okay. My mom taught me that happiness is an alternative and that you have to choose. If you don’t like a situation or you need to change the situation or you need to change how you feel regarding it because going unhappy through life is not okay.
Did you spend a lot of time considering the decision to move to Argentina?
I think the move didn’t scare me because it didn’t seem like a big deal. I was already visiting for longer and longer times and was thinking of staying longer. But Luis made Buenos Aires my home. He gave me a circle of friends, family, a position in the tango community and an understanding of what it is like to be Argentine. Most importantly, he loved me and he made me understand support and companionship in a way that he had never experienced.
What is the key to finding love?
We were both in pretty good shape when we met. I always tell people that I was never as happy as the day before I met him. Not that I’m less happy now, but I wasn’t looking for anything. I don’t think romance and relationships always bring happiness, but happiness is what allows them to happen.
Do you think things would have been different if this had happened to you 10 years earlier or 10 years later?
I don’t think it would have been any different. But I think the older you get, the more confident you become. Not because you become better at what you used to do, but because you care less regarding what people think. For example, I speak Spanish fluently, but I make all kinds of mistakes. Now that I know what I’m worth, my worth, who I am in the world, doesn’t come from how well I speak Spanish. And that feeling gives you a certain freedom to go ahead and do things that as a younger person maybe you weren’t willing to do.
If you had a friend who came to you and said ‘I fell in love with tango, I traveled to Buenos Aires, I met this man, he thinks he is the best dancer in the world, should I move to Argentina to be with him?’, what would you say?
I’d probably tell him to try it. There is a downside to being single. You need to have a family and a partner, who are good. I would have been glad to have them, but I didn’t. But there is an advantage to being single, which means you can do anything you want. You don’t have to buy sports shoes for anyone. You don’t have to send anyone to Harvard. If you have the disadvantage why not take advantage of it.
