If it wasn’t for the Mets, they would never have met.
Four members of the rabid fan community called The 7 Line Army — who sit in a special section during games at Citi Field and travel together to away games — found Amazin’ partners as they bonded over their love of the Mets.
Both couples, now married with kids, will be in the stands March 26 in Flushing when the team takes on the Pittsburgh Pirates in the season opener.
Andrew Indart knew Amanda was a good catch after she posed for the 7 Line calendar, where female fans were voted in by their male counterparts. After casting his ballot for her, he made his first move at the calendar release party in 2014.
“I had her sign my calendar,” recalled the 38-year-old Brooklynite.
But he continued to play the field.
“The thing with the calendar was, every year it would bring in a group of new girls to the group and you get to know them all,” said the Sanitation Department supervisor.
Queens native Amanda, 36, recalled some small talk early on: “I did kind of like him. But I didn’t really talk to him enough.”
That all changed when The 7 Line got on a bus in 2015 to go to Washington, D.C. for opening day.
There were two calendar girls on the bus, so Andrew asked which one wanted the honor of getting on his shoulders to enter Nationals Park.
Amanda “shot her hand right up,” Andrew recalled.
Six years later they were married, with a guest list that was 75% friends from the 7 Line, including founder Darren Meenan and his wife Kelly.
Richard and Tara Rincón also fell in love because of their fandom.
“We’re definitely like opposite types of people. The only thing that literally brought us together was the Mets,” said Tara, 41, of East Setauket, Long Island.
They met at the start of the 2015 season, a year the Mets ended up in the World Series.
“That year, I think we went to almost 40 games, if you include all the playoffs,” said Tara, another calendar girl.
Tara first spoke to Richard during a pregame party at, of all places, Billy’s Sports Bar outside Yankee Stadium. She needed to look for her dad outside the bar, so she asked Richard to hold her beer.
But “I never came back inside,” she said.
Which left Richard, 38, of Flushing, Queens, a bit annoyed.
“So I was just stuck holding her beer, and I’m like, ‘Who does this girl think she is?’” he recalled.
Tara did find him at the game to apologize, and “I was like, ‘Yeah, whatever. I just drank your beer.’”
The pair really got to know each other when the group went out to drown their sorrows after the Mets lost to the Kansas City Royals in the World Series.
Six years later they also married, and Andrew Indart officiated and Amanda made a speech.
The Rincóns now have two children, Maximus, 8, and Lenox, 6, and the Indarts a 2-year-old son Hunter — and all are Mets fans.
[Notigroup Newsroom in collaboration with other media outlets, with information from the following sources]
