By Jae-Ha Kim
Chicago Sun-Times
December 26, 1999
It’s one thing watching a guy play bass on stage. It’s another thing seeing him walk toward you in a club. So when Caroline Ansani saw Ted – the man who would become her husband – venturing toward her, she busted a move.
“I thought he was about the cutest thing that I had ever seen,” Caroline recalls, laughing. “I’m not really sure what I said. Maybe something really stupid like, `Hey, aren’t you that guy in Material Issue?’ We talked for about 20 minutes. I didn’t want to look like I wanted to talk to him too much, so I left to go dancing.”
Ted, who was equally smitten, went looking for her before the evening was over.
“He told me that he was leaving,” says Caroline, a teacher. “He gave me his phone number and asked me to call. I was excited, but I didn’t want to look excited, so I said, `Sure.’ ”
At the time, Material Issue was on the verge of stardom and Ted was reaping the benefits of being a young rock star.
“We met in 1989 on my 21st birthday,” Ted says. “I didn’t want to put her on the spot by asking for her number, which is why I gave her mine. I remember my number on my voting slip, ’cause I had just voted that day. I was so into her that I think I started writing out the address and anything else I could think of.”
After the first few dates, he said goodbye to the other women he was dating.
“I knew within the first month or two that Caroline was the girl I wanted to marry,” Ted says. “I let her know that, too.”
He proposed to her around Halloween 1991. He hid the engagement ring in a pumpkin they were carving.
Married in October 1992, the couple had to work their wedding around Ted’s touring schedule.
“(Material Issue’s) manager forgot about my wedding when he booked dates,” Ted says. “So I flew in from the West Coast to get married. I only had a few days off, so we had to make do with a honeymoon in Galena, Ill. It was way in the country and rolling hills and very romantic and . . .”
Ted stops when he hears Caroline laughing.
“She’s laughing at my attempts to embellish it!” he says.
Now the parents of a 5-year-old boy and a 3-year-old girl, the couple are expecting a third child in June.
Ted, who is working on a solo career, jokes that his kids are very unimpressed with his musical background.
“They hear me talking on the phone about my Web site,” he says. “They tell people that my name is tedansani.com.”
