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People never want to be part of the process, but they do want to be part of the outcome. It turns out that the process is where we discover who deserves to be part of the outcome…
“It’s a long story and a lot of fighting. Our five children arrived so quickly that we didn't have time to get to know each other deeply. "because it was a constant task to care for and raise them. Until we found ourselves alone in the pandemic and started making TikToks," she says. Sonia“We started off very differently than other stories; we literally didn’t have a relationship.”
The official story
On May 21, 1962, the Chpritz family was in the Argentine province of Corrientes, celebrating the first birthday of their eldest daughter, Laura. What they never suspected was that on that same day, Sonia Inés, the second daughter of Isaac and Dora Chpritz, would be born. Immediately after the birth, and with the family now expanded, they returned to Talar de Pacheco, Buenos Aires Province, where they lived year-round.
Isaac Chprintz had the idea of moving his family out of their current home; he felt it wasn't a suitable place to raise children and wanted to give them a better future. In 1978, he was given the opportunity to work at the newly opened Papel Prensa plant in San Pedro, and he didn't hesitate to move there with his wife and four children.
Sonia Chprintz He was 15 when they moved to San Pedro, where he continued his third year of high school. In his fifth year, he thought it would be a good idea to help his family with his earnings, and, At 19, he started working in an office As a payroll clerk, she worked as a payroll clerk. “It was very difficult to keep the family afloat. We were four siblings, and my father worked all day. At that time, you didn't ask your father for money, and I wanted my own. I wanted to go to school; I trained for medicine. It was a difficult time, and my father wouldn't let me because he was afraid,” she says, referring to the years of the dictatorship.
Jorge Luis Chediak He was born on October 29, 1959, in San Pedro, the product of the marriage between Alyde and Jorge, both immigrants from Lebanon. Jorge Luis, or "Queque" as he's been known since birth, is the oldest of three brothers who grew up in a wealthy family in San Pedro. His passion for airplanes - "I became a pilot" - is the same as his eccentric neck tattoo - "I got it a month ago; I saw it in a movie and I loved it." They reveal their free and impulsive spirit, which, to a large extent, gives rise to this love story.
It was 1982, and 20-year-old Sonia would meet up with her friends every afternoon after work at “Jano”—the café on 1000 Mitre Street—to chat and have a cup of coffee. “My job was downtown, 30 blocks from home, and it was a lovely summer evening, and after we got together, I would walk home.” Until One day, “by chance,” Queque walked into the “beautiful bar on Mitre Street.”
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What Sonia didn't suspect was that the man didn't just happen to be at that bar; he'd had his eye on her for a while. "Of course! I met her at a club." It was one day when there was a car rally in San Pedro, and all the young people in town had arranged to meet up at Hollywood—the current dance club—before the race. “There I saw her,” he describes with the transcendence that means that first time one sees love. “I started looking at her, looking, looking… I looked at her everywhere,” she indicates with her hand, panning continuously up and down, “and I followed her all over the place,” she continues, pointing out her route, now with her finger. “I didn't notice because I was dating the owner of the club,” Sonia chimes in, smiling.
“Then I started investigating where she was. There, I discovered that she was walking along a certain street every day when she left work, and I started following her,” Queque says, referring to Mitre, the main street in San Pedro. Thus, the persistent young man intercepted her every day during her commute.He greeted her and offered to take her in his car, but when Sonia refused, the candidate accompanied her, chatting her up. from the window of his car, at a walking pace. “Until one day I walked into a bar, and there she was sitting with a friend and a friend of mine,” he says, hurriedly describing what follows. “So I started going to that bar… to see her,” Queque smiles.
“My family was a very hard-working, very humble family. My dad left everything for my mom. And he,” Sonia says, pointing to her husband, “was from a super-well-off family, with businesses, very Turkish-style, shops, a furrier. At that time, furs were used. He had all the looks, all the clothes, he was always impeccably dressed, and he's still impeccably dressed,” she says, hugging him. “They had a lot of cars, motorcycles, everything, and I was walking home from work.”", she recalls, emphasizing the prejudice she had formed about Queque just from having met him. "I thought he was really unfriendly and conceited. With his slicked-back hair, always impeccable with his little mustache, his pants, his immaculate white sneakers," she reveals, revealing an unattainable look for someone who comes from a home where luxuries include sacrificing Sunday barbecue so the children could buy their schoolbooks. "He was divine, but I said, 'This guy isn't my level.' I saw him as very arrogant and didn't even say hello. “I had a gold lighter,” Queque laughs and adds, “a Dupont, but I haven’t smoked anything in years,” and that was too much for me.”
So, this "arrogant" character would sit at Sonia's table and chat like one of the group. "I didn't say hello to him, but he came to the bar for me every day." Until one rainy afternoon, the patient Queque, eager to woo the twenty-something who had unwittingly smitten him to the rhythm of Hollywood, found his opportunity: "It was raining hard, so I offered her a ride home."
“He took us all!” she chimes in, pointing with her index finger. “He would load us all into the car, distribute them to all my friends, and leave me for last, with the excuse that I lived far away.”, he recalls, recounting the famous trick that gentlemen had to stay at least a few minutes alone with the girl who kept them awake at night.
Adriana, one of the regulars at "Jano's" table, was a friend of both and had the privilege of hearing both sides: the one who was being pursued and the one who was being pursued. On one side was Queque, telling her that he loved Sonia, that she should help him, "that she should hook me up." And in the other ear was her friend protesting: "Oh, Adriana, this guy's here again, I can't stand him," she complained. And the friend, who knew him better, said to Sonia, "But you don't know what Queque is?" Give him time to get to know him because you don't know, he's so good, he's not how you imagined him.". So, little by little, Sonia became convinced that her friend Adriana was right, “it was true, he was so affectionate and so generous that, in fact, we would always have coffee and he would go and pay for the table, very attentive, a gentleman, he would move your chair, he would open the door for you,” she says proudly, leaning closer to the gentleman who is now next to her and, she clarifies, he still maintains the same manners he had from the first day, “so I went with the flow.”
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Consequently, one day during the "repartija" (distribution) when, as usual, Sonia was left for last in her suitor's car, Queque finally took the plunge. "After many months, one day he left me at the door of my house like all those times he took us, and He kissed me before I got out of the car, on the corner of my house. And that's where it all started.". And they started dating.
The unofficial story
After just a few weeks of romance, Sonia found out her friend was right: Queque was everything a woman could ask for in a man, and she immediately fell in love with the high-society heartthrob. They saw each other every day of the week. And after three months together, Sonia knew it: she was completely in love. But that wasn't all she discovered: "He caught my attention because he didn't show much interest in me, and most weekends I didn't see him," Sonia explains. Then one Friday night when she was supposed to go out with her friends—"we also had a pre-party at Bar Jano"—her world came crashing down. "When I walked in I see Queque in the background sitting with a girl… hugging each other. I froze. I almost died.”, and between disbelief and despair, she roared to her friend, “Adriana, 'Are you seeing the same thing I see?'” who shielded herself, “Yes, wait, I'll tell you now.”
And then he told her. He had been dating Marcela for 12 years. “I wanted to kill Adriana for not telling me the most important part!” says Sonia, devastated, and decided to leave him. “What hurt me most was the lie, that he wasn't honest with me.”But he, persistent as usual, would win her back. "He followed me every day from work to my house, me walking and him driving or riding his motorcycle the three kilometers." Sometimes he was pardoned, but the Don Juan would disappear again. "I didn't know how to let go of 'the other thing' because so many years had passed," Queque explains, speaking about his relationship with Marcela. "I didn't want to hurt her. I was just waiting for her to graduate as a lawyer so I could leave her." But Sonia was still on the other side. "When Queque disappeared, I would get angry, and he would take the plane and fly around my house. I didn't want to go out, and my mom would tell me, 'Look, he's making a pass at you there.'" I forgave him, I understood, and I hoped. We loved each other very, very much. For me, there was no other man in my life. I dreamed of marrying him..
So, taking advantage of the fact that Marcela lived in Buenos Aires during the week where she studied Law, Sonia and Queque began to hang out "on the sly.", with countless comings and goings, for almost three years. But things got complicated, “one day my friends discovered Queque's car, which he used to leave hidden several blocks from home so no one would see it or suspect it.” Her worried accomplices didn't hesitate to let the man know that their friend wasn't a game and that they weren't in favor of this secret relationship at all. Immediately afterward, they wrote on his windshield in lipstick: 'We saw you, we know you're seeing her, leave her alone.' “They were so angry about the situation; so much so that it took them a few years to forgive him,” Sonia confesses, and continues, “they were years I sometimes prefer not to remember.” Despite everything, Queque's love for Sonia was also genuine, “I suffered, I had a bad time, I wanted to be with Sonia and couldn't. I also dreamed about her,” he opens up.
Until one day what no one expected happened: Sonia’s “delay” was pregnancy. "I told him I was pregnant and that I was going to go ahead with it, no matter what decision I made. That moment was very hard…" she breaks down, "he took it well. He told me he was going to stay with me but that he had to figure out 'the other thing' first." And he disappeared. Yes, During those long, fruitful months of pregnancy, Queque was not seen in those parts.
Her young age of 22 never made her doubt her decision: she was going to give birth to that child no matter what. “I'm left alone, I'm still doing what I do. There were many nights of crying alone and…” she becomes emotional again, “I had gotten used to the idea that I had to work for my son and that I was going to start a life alone. I didn't hear anything else from him, absolutely nothing,” Sonia says, as if to emphasize repeatedly the extreme emptiness of the word “nothing.” This being a story that took place in San Pedro—at that time, a city of fewer than 40,000 inhabitants—the absence further exacerbated the pain of an expectant mother without the father in sight.
One summer afternoon, Sonia left work and came home feeling very tired; she was very pregnant, "almost ready to give birth, I was eight and a bit months along." Suddenly, Andrés, her brother, who lived half a block away, knocked on the door. "Come over to my house, I want to show you something," Andrés encouraged, waving his hands. When his sister refused, he insisted, "Come here, it'll only take five minutes."
When Sonia approached the neighboring house, she gasped, "outside was his (Queque's) giant superbike, wanting to see me." Typical of her condition, Sonia felt "awful and fat." They hadn't seen each other in months, "I was frozen." He told me he was coming, that everything was going to be okay, that he was going to resolve his issues. "And I told him no way, that I wasn't going to accept it and that I had already decided what my life was going to be like from that moment on. He came over with a smile, as if nothing had happened, while I had spent all those months biting my pillow and crying," she recalls.
“From then on, I didn't see him again,” she says, recalling her last three weeks before giving birth. And she didn't think she'd ever see him again. “He'd lied to me before, I couldn't stand another lie.” Sonia worked until one Friday in the fall. Early Saturday morning, she started having contractions. Her friends kept her company all day. “I love them. They've been my friends for 40 years, and I'm still friends with them.” They packed her maternity bag and took her to the San Pedro Clinic.
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The happy story
Small town, big hell, the truth is that all of San Pedro was waiting for this “uncommon” birth. In the early hours of Sunday, April 14, 1985, Jorge Agustín Chediak was born, “and I arrived,” Queque intervenes., and continues, "Her brother called me saying that (Sonia) had had a baby, so I ran off over there." Queque had asked Andrés to please let him know about any news of his child's birth. It was a deal between men. Sonia wasn't supposed to find out.
When the door to room 12 at the San Pedro Clinic opened, words were superfluous. "Nothing. We didn't say anything to each other." We looked at each other. And we never parted again.”, they say together, mixing one sentence with another.
“I kept saying to myself, 'He's going to leave, he's going to leave'… and he never left,” Sonia recalls, “I didn't ask him anything. Not about his relationship, nothing at all.” It also happened that, as if nature were not only wise but gifted, Two days before Agustín was born - as everyone calls him - Marcela graduated as a lawyer and, finally, Queque left her. “I was already alone, and we started to become a couple,” he says, while his wife, at his side, gloats over what she's hearing. But it wasn't just the baby's father who suddenly appeared at the maternity ward. “Two days after Agustín was born, and I was still at the clinic, there was a knock on the door and Queque's parents came in. I didn't know them,” Sonia realizes, tenderly mentioning Don Chediak's words. “'Everything will be fine,' my father-in-law told me, and my mother-in-law was fascinated with a baby, even though they loved Marcela because they'd been with her all their lives.” But the Chediaks soon learned to love Sonia, the woman of their son's dreams, eternally.
And although they didn't yet know where they were going to live, they did know that from then on, it would be just the three of them together: Sonia, Queque, and Agustín, their newborn baby. "I spent a long time dreaming that he would leave us. It was hard," she admits, and continues, "but Queque was always a great father, so that doubt disappeared when I saw him with his son, who loved him so much." And so it was that, after 15 months of living together in the house of Dora, Sonia's mother, Gastón arrived, the couple's second son. In December 1986, it became a formal marriage, with all the bells and whistles, by civil and church. Nine months later, the family grew again: Simón was born. Then came Sara and Amira. The family continued to prosper, and soon Lolo, Roma, Donato, and, on the way, Fausto, the grandchildren, were added.
Today, their love went viral on social media: “We started our formal relationship right after our son was born; we weren't dating,” she says, wanting to explain that they had never spent so much quality time alone together in their lives. “We never took vacations alone, we didn't even go on our honeymoon because we didn't want to leave the kids so young. We spent our entire lives raising and working for our children,” Sonia says affectionately. Until March 2020, when the pandemic hit: “There was nothing to do, we were alone, and we found each other again. We downloaded TikTok and started testing it a thousand times until we got it right,” they laugh, “making videos day and night… we'd never had so much fun!” Suddenly, their videos, which gracefully depicted everyday scenes from married life, began to go viral on Instagram as well; his reels with more than 10 million views and 400 thousand likes, are the true reflection that love, if it is love, then it will be.
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