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At home with the speaker

By Vera Haller | amNewYork Editor in Chief

Kim Catullo remembers her response five years ago when a friend tried to set her up with Christine Quinn. "I'm not interested," she recalled saying, explaining that she did not want to date a politician.

A short time later, however, she noticed campaign posters for Quinn in her Greenwich Village neighborhood. "I thought, 'Oh, she's kind of cute,'" Catullo said. "So I called my friend up and said, 'I'll give it a shot.'"

Their first date was on the Friday after Sept. 11, 2001. "It was a week when a lot of people came together and a lot of people reassessed their relationships and grew apart," Catullo said.

For Quinn and Catullo, it was a time to come together. And the couple has remained together, now sharing a home in Chelsea with their dog, Sadie, a Shar-Pei-lab mix.

They've made adjustments in the past year because of the demands on Quinn's time now that she is speaker. Catullo also works long hours as a partner at the law firm of Gibbons, Del Deo, Dolan, Griffinger & Vecchione, where she practices commercial litigation.

"I'm convinced this whole speaker thing was a conspiracy so she wouldn't have to walk the dog again," Catullo said jokingly during an interview with the couple at Catullo's Manhattan office.

"It's pretty wild. We're very busy people. It's interesting going over the schedule of who's going to have responsibility for what," Catullo said. "It's what every couple, every family does when two people are working."

When they're not juggling their schedules, Quinn and Catullo enjoy going out to dinner and taking walks in their neighborhood, though both said they've had to get used to having Quinn's security detail following them around.

The fact that Quinn is the first openly gay speaker of the City Council has placed their relationship under some scrutiny. Catullo remembers being described in the newspapers after Quinn's inauguration as "the woman behind the woman."

Over the course of the year, the interest has died down, she said, though people are still curious.

"If I go to some events and meet people sometimes I forget [we are a gay couple] and I see people really interested in me," Catullo said. "I think they're wondering if I have three heads or something. Immediately after they meet us, they realize we're just another normal couple just juggling it all."