Ten Years Later: How 9/11 changed Stephanie Galvani

At 8:58 a.m. on September 11th, 2001, Jeff Gonski received a phone call at work.  The caller ID read Amy, his fiancée, who was at a trade show in the North Tower of the World Trade Center.  When he answered the call, the line was dead.

Moments later, a colleague leaned around Gonski’s cubicle and told him that planes had just flown into the World Trade Center.

Ten years after the 9/11 terrorist attacks, Jeff Gonski is happily married to Wayland Middle School English teacher Stephanie Galvani. Though much has changed over time, the death of Gonski’s late fiancee Amy Toyen still has a large impact on their lives.

“Jeff says that he still has nightmares in which Amy knocks on our front door and says, ‘I’m back, what do you mean you went on with your life?’ I couldn’t imagine having that piece out there, this unclosed, unfinished chapter,” said Galvani.

Amy Toyen and Jeff Gonski met while attending Bentley College in Waltham. A few years later, Gonski surprised Toyen with a trip to Ireland, where he proposed to her on the Cliffs of Moher.

“They had this fabulous, storybook wedding planned,” said Galvani. “It was going to be a big, big wedding.”

Toyen died five months before the wedding.

After Toyen passed away, Gonski was told he could take off as much time as he needed to put the pieces of his life back together.

“He went to Boston College a lot and did some counseling with some of the priests there and went to the gym, and he also ate a lot,” said Galvani. “He then proceeded, around the third month, to date. He kind of got it out of his system, and he was wild.”

Gonski and Galvani were set up on a blind date in August, 2002, and then began dating casually. Though Galvani knew about Toyen’s death before she met Gonski, she didn’t bring it up during their first date.

“I was going to let him tell me in his own way whenever he was ready,” Galvani said. “Because something like that is such a hugely defining piece of who you are; I felt that he had the right to tell me his own story.”

Gonski proposed to Galvani in 2006 at Millenium Park in Boston. They were married at a small ceremony in the Caribbean.

“It was a very different style of dating, and our wedding was very simple as opposed to the very elaborate wedding [that Gonski and Toyen had planned],” said Galvani. “It was better for me, knowing the kind of person that I am.”

Though Galvani never met Toyen personally, she and Gonski have maintained a close relationship with the Toyen family.

“[Amy’s parents] have been really generous with us, and they love our son. They even have a picture of him up on their fridge,” said Galvani. “That means a lot to me because…it’s hard.”

On the tenth anniversary of September 11th, Galvani and Gonski plan to join Martin and Dorine Toyen at the memorial service at Ground Zero. Because Gonski had no legal ties to Amy Toyen when she passed away, he was not technically invited to the memorial service. The Toyens have played a large role in getting the couple involved in the service.

Galvani and Gonski will fly to New York on September 10th and wake up early the next morning for the memorial at Ground Zero.  There will be a moment of silence at 8:43 a.m., when the first plane hit the South Tower, followed by a reading of the names of the people killed that day.

“My primary concern has been figuring out the logistics, like how we’re getting there, where we are staying, where my son is going, so I haven’t had time to think ‘Does Jeff even want me there? Do the Toyens want me there?’ Working on all the mechanics of it has shielded me from thinking about the emotions of it because I think the emotions are hard,” Galvani said.

Galvani knows attending the memorial service will be tough.

“My job is to be there for Jeff,” said Galvani. “It’s not about me. I think just being present and witnessing, this happened, this horrible tragedy that we cannot wrap our heads around, but we’ve honored those who have fallen and we’ve moved on and we’ve taken them with us.”