BUFFALO, N.Y. — "He couldn't speak English. She couldn't speak Italian. But she said, 'Just the way he said it, I feel in love with him right there and that was it,'" said Dennis DiPaolo.
And so, as son Dennis DiPaolo tells it, one of the greatest restaurant power couples in Western New York was formed when Ethel Martinez married Ilio DiPaolo and together they built DiPaolo's Restaurant.
"What's the best way never to be hungry? Well, open up a restaurant," Dennis DiPaolo said.
That was the wrestler's dream. His Italian heritage provided most of the menu, but Ethel DiPaolo filled another role, one just as important.
"She wasn't as much in the kitchen as she was helping to contain the books," Dennis DiPaolo said. "I mean, she made her macaroni salad and coleslaws all those type of things."
Of course, while building the family business, the DiPaolo's built a family along with it.
"You know what, my mother was always the one, the comforting one that would sit and listen to you and talk to you," Dennis DiPaolo said.
Even though her husband had a certain celebrity status, it was always a team effort.
"She was the one that would always bring everything together," Dennis DiPaolo said. "She'd walk through the kitchen she'd walk through the dining room and wear a smile ya know. Everybody felt that comfort, that ease. From the staff to the customers, she just had that calming soothing effect to everybody that really brought the whole restaurant together as a family."
Dennis DiPaolo added, "She was the one that always made us look in the mirror and always say like 'you know what, think of the other people first and treat those people the way you would like to be treated."
Her generosity, her compassion and her kindness garnered her a wide range of civic honors as well as the love and admiration of family and friends.
Ethel DiPaolo passed away on March 21, after a brief period of declining health, and after a life well lived.