Browning Grande Jetes into Marriage

Four-time World Champion Kurt Browning remembers trying to skip out of a cocktail reception in Alberta, Canada, in 1991. Today he's glad he didn't. It was at that reception that he met the ballerina Sonia Rodriguez, who was on tour, and fell in love.

"Sonia wasn't invited to the reception. I was trying to skip out of it," Browning explains. "Another girl didn't want to go, so Sonia borrowed her friend's dress and took her place. I sort of got seen by people at the reception and got pulled into it. And that's when we met."

A year later, Browning says, they started courting. "Courtin's such a great word. I'm going courtin," he says.

On June 30, the two were married. With the Toronto skyline as the backdrop, about 120 guests sailed to Toronto Island for the outdoor wedding. Canadian singer Michael Burgess sang at the ceremony. Burgess was the guy Browning sant the national anthem with at the opening ceremonies of the World Championships in Edmonton last March.

Standing with Browning were former Canadian Men's Champion Michael Slipchuk and former Canadian Men's medalist Norm Proft, both fellow clubmates at the Royal Glenora Club in Edmonton. Browning's best man was Gareth Edwards of Edmonton, who was a squash player at Royal Glenora. "He and I just met when we were in our late teens and just kept hangin' out together," says Browning. Other guests, included Scott Hamilton, Brian Orser, Toller Cranston and Kristi Yamaguchi.

Rodriguez, who dances with the National Ballet of Canada, is a dual citizen of Canada and Spain. "She was born in Canada, lived here until she was 4 and moved to Spain until she was 17," Browning explains. "Her parents are still in Madrid."

Several guests from Canada's ballet fraternity also attended the wedding, including Canada's foremost ballerina Karen Kain.

Browning says the life of a professional skater and a ballerina are similar, especially in terms of touring.

"Our schedules are so that if [Sonia's] rehearsing, she gets weekends off so she'll come see me perform. I have trouble seeing her perform, but I actually get to see her rehearse a lot," he says. "If she has a nice part and I don't get to see her actually perform it, I go in and watch practice. Watching the ballet practice is more like watching the real thing than watching a figure skating practice. It's the full run-through. They're very disciplined, more than us skaters that's for sure."

Two weeks before the wedding, Browning seemed more relaxed than ever. "We're kind of enjoying being in the same place at the same time," he said from the couple's Toronto apartment.

Browning wrapped up a grueling touring schedule May 27. He did both the U.S. and Canadian tours of Stars on Ice and then skated in the Skate the Nation B-tour that landed in smaller arenas across Canada. Of the nine professional competitions he entered, he won four of them.

"I had a really great season," Browning says. "What a difference a year makes. You always need a good skate and then some luck to win something, and that happened a couple of times in a row this season. That's what was missing from last year."

His first season as a professional was filled with bad luck and bad timing. He recalls, "I was battling a few injuries and a bad pair of skates, it seemed like nothing could go right. I remember competing in Hamilton in the Canadian Pro, competing with not even my top hook done up on the skates. Last year was a joke."

Finally good momentum started to kick in.

"It really wasn't until the first rehearsals in Stars on Ice, before the first show last December - I went on the ice early and did some jumps and thought 'Okay.' That was a starting-over period, and I felt the momentum begin to pick up and was really rolling by the end of that season," he says.

It was toward the end of the 1995 season that Browning proposed to Rodriguez, in front of 16,000 people at Toronto's Maple Leaf Gardens. He was on the ice and she was in the audience. "It wasn't planned," he says. "A little girl in the audience asked me if I was married, and I found where Sonia was sitting and got down on one knee and asked her to marry me."

She said yes, and Browning skated off the ice with his fiancee in his arms. It was a typical Kurt Browning moment. Spontaneous.

"I think I even surprised myself," he says with a laugh.

According to the 30-year-old skater, the happiness he is feeling in his personal life has helped to turn things around on the ice. With help from choreographer Sandra Bezic, he delivered two power-packed programs, skating to the Commodores' "Brick House" and an inventive show tunes number called "That's Entertainment III."

Browning considers professional competitions fun but says there's a big difference between events like the Rock 'n Roll Figure Skating Championships and Dick Button's World Professional Skating Championships in Landover, MD.

"I can't say that I take them all seriously because I think there are different levels of seriousness," he says. "At Landover, it's impossible not to step on the ice and feel the amateur tension that used to be there. And the Toyota Pro in Hamilton, there's so much personal pride in trying to skate well in Canada's biggest professional competition that that one I get really nervous for. I think it's the same for all the skaters.

"If I'm not taking it seriously, then it means that I'm going to skate absolutely fantastic, because I'm there to enjoy the event. Like Fox' Rock 'n' Roll - I went there to make sure the audience and panel of celebrity judges had as much fun as I could give them."

Because of the wedding, Browning took two months off from skating in June and July. The newlyweds spent most of July moving into their new home, near his parents' place in Caroline, Alberta. "It'll be nice to spend our summers there; it's a future thing," he says.

Browning also enjoyed several rounds of golf during his off-season. "I do like to golf. I got a hole in one the other day at Pine Point in London, Ontario," he says. "I can't wait to tell Lloyd Eisler."

During the Skate the Nation tour, there were five sets of golf clubs on the bus. Explains Browning, "We'll do the show and then drive all night, get into the next city early the next morning and then go golfing."

Says Browning about the new skating season, "I'm going to enjoy the competitions that I enjoyed last year and have been invited back to a lot of them. I think skating well last year will help me this year. You want to try and stay up in the top as long as you can. That's exciting."

He will continue to be an ambassador for the Muscular Dystrophy Association of Canada and to promote Kellogg's products, his major endorsement. Part of his Kellogg's deal goes toward the Browning Fund for junior and novice skaters in Canada.