Love on The Rock: Sushi, taxes and purple loafers
San Francisco, 2013. Liz Hanley’s dear friends Tim and Erin have just opened a restaurant in the Mission District named Ichi Sushi. Liz has helped them with the accounting, financing, bookkeeping, taxes, and investor meetings.
There is a guy, an investor in the restaurant, who never shows up to investor meetings, and who sends Liz a snarky email saying she has misspelled his street address.
“What’s the deal with this guy?” Liz asks. Erin replies, “Actually you should meet David Austin. He will be happy that there is an adult in charge of the money. And you guys actually have a lot in common. You’re both single parents, both motorcycle riders, both sober.”
A year passes and Tim and Erin have planned a double blind date for Liz and David. On David’s birthday, no less … at a different sushi restaurant.
Liz’s take on the date: “I was used to dating guitar players and drummers and being an accountant for clubs and restaurants. And here’s this guy who’s a tech nerd at Apple. But clearly he likes sushi, so I decided to give it a try.”
The blind date was a success. David remembers, “I immediately thought Liz was tall and beautiful, articulate, smart, outgoing and very forthright.” Liz found David to be “really real, obviously smart, positive and clearly so loving about his kids.”
At the end of the date, David asks Liz for her business card. “I don’t hear from him,” she recalls, “and a couple days later, I get a LinkedIn request. I think, ‘Oh man, he wants an accountant!’”
David’s take: “I’m a nerdy tech guy, so what I did is I took a photo of Liz’s business card and the LinkedIn request happened automatically. I was just waiting a few days to call her because that’s what you do.”
Soon, the two connected, and dates were arranged around the logistics of babysitters and the kids’ schedules. They wanted to keep their dates secret from the kids initially, but soon they would all meet at the Ichi Sushi restaurant’s Christmas party. Liz was invited with her accounting staff and her daughter Rosie, five. David was invited with his kids Indigo, 10, and Kat, 7.
Liz’s colleague checked David out and said, “He’s cute, but wow, that’s some outfit.” He was sporting a purple velvet blazer and purple loafers. “Yeah, the outfit is definitely weird,” Liz replied.
Despite David’s outfit, Liz said, “The kids were getting along great at the craft table, and we were so happy to see that.”
A few days later, Liz broached the subject of the purple blazer and loafers. David had remembered Liz mentioning her daughter Rosie’s favorite color was purple, hence the outfit. While at the party, Rosie had said, “I like that guy who likes purple.” Liz felt bad having judged David’s outfit; David had indeed warmed Rosie and Liz’s hearts.
Soon the couple went on vacation with the three kids to Baja, Mexico. Indigo taught Rosie to swim, and as Liz told it, “We knew we were onto something.” David added, “Our shared commitment to our kids sealed the deal.”
A couple of years later, the two families moved in together. Indigo was starry-eyed to have a new younger sister to dote on while Kat played video games. Liz and David eventually bought a new home together in San Francisco.
Liz and Rosie had been coming out to Shelter Island to Liz’s family’s 1890 farmhouse in the Center since Rosie was born, and soon they were spending summers on the Island with David, Indigo and Kat. Liz worked remotely at her accounting firm while David worked his tech job in Manhattan. They purchased their own summer home on the Island in early 2020. And then COVID hit.
According to Liz, “We are the least outdoorsy people, and at the start of the pandemic, we rented an RV and drove it cross-country for five days while the kids were doing remote schooling online.” They lived on the Island for eight months, then returned to San Francisco for Indigo’s senior year in high school.
“San Francisco was a mess, like a zombie apocalypse. We were playing Cards Against Humanity on Zoom with our Island friends Katie and Josh Potter, and right then and there, we decided to sell our house and move to the Island full-time,” David recalled.
Elizabeth Hanley was born in White Plains, N.Y., and has been coming to the Shelter Island farmhouse of her grandparents — both Irish immigrants — since she was an infant. Her family moved to the Island when she was in kindergarten and she attended school here until second grade, when she attended the Tuller Academy, an Episcopal school just across South Ferry in North Haven.
Liz holds many joyful memories of her childhood on Shelter Island, including her friendship with Jenny Card: “Our parents would ‘turn us out the house,’ meaning we were not to come home until sunset. Jenny and I would run to the vegetable garden behind Card’s Cabins and eat green beans off the vine until our stomachs ached. We would also play epic games of flashlight tag in the square of Card’s Cabins.”
Liz recalled with a gleam, “My mom was an international flight attendant, and my bestie Tara Jernick and I would bring up the gifts at Our Lady of the Isle in matching outfits from Benetton that my mom had bought us in Europe. We thought we were all that!”
Liz’s family moved to her mom’s home state of California when she was 12. She was the third generation in her family to attend Trinity College in Washington, D.C., where she majored in art history and French cultural studies. “I’m a very unlikely accountant, but if you need to know anything about French gothic architecture, I’m your girl,” she said.
David Austin was born in Bellingham, Wash., the son of an Air Force officer. His family lived for a time in Izmir, Turkey. They later moved to Van Nuys, Calif. until the earthquake of 1971, and then settled in another Air Force city, Spokane, Wash.. David attended Eastern Washington University in Spokane and majored in math and computer science.
In 2017 and 2018, Liz and David got married twice: the first time for tax purposes (no joke), and the second time in the backyard of her parents’ farmhouse on the Island with a small gathering of family and friends.
“My dad took an old piece of original decking from when my grandparents lived here and moved it to the back yard. We were married on that deck under a huge oak tree,” Liz said. The couple’s dear friend Tony Lee officiated.
Liz owns and operates a specialty accounting firm based in San Francisco and New York. David recently left his esteemed career in tech — he spent 17 years in executive management at Apple, followed by additional tech and start-up roles here and abroad in China — to help Liz run the firm.
David serves on the board of CAST in Southold and is a member of the Shelter Island Planning Board. He is an active interior firefighter and the treasurer of the Shelter Island Fire Department, where he recently helped the department gain nonprofit status. David has also helped out as an assistant general manager of the Shelter Island Bucks.
Liz serves as a Eucharistic Minister at Our Lady of the Isle Catholic Church and chairs the Shelter Island Community Housing Board, where she secured significant State funding for accessory dwelling unit (ADU) grants on the Island. She sits on the Island’s Democratic Committee, and also started the Island’s community clothing swap, which she now runs with David year-round … just not during peak tax season.
As for the kids, Indigo will soon graduate pre-med from UCLA; Kat is a freshman at Kansas State studying computer science; and Rosie is a junior at Shelter Island School planning to attend university in Scotland, England or Ireland, as she, like her mom, holds Irish citizenship.
Liz and David plan a date night every Friday night. Whether to Vine Street Cafe or Nookie’s at Silver Sands Motel in Greenport, they never miss a Friday date. In the summer, they faithfully frequent the Tuck Shop; Liz orders a cup of Chocolate Chip Cookie Dough with mini M&Ms, while David’s go-to is Pirates Treasure in a waffle cone.
When asked how they stay so thin, they respond in unison: “We walk our dogs a lot!”
“We have a mean Bishon named Rex, who thinks he’s a T-Rex, and Cedric, a rescue cattle dog who’s high energy and needs to be walked constantly,” Liz said, thus enabling her and David to indulge in all that ice cream.
The couple’s hopes for the future? Liz always dreamed of one day owning her grandparents’ 1890 farmhouse. Now that dream is becoming a reality, since they will soon complete the purchase of the property from her parents.
Liz and David’s advice for couples? Talk a lot, listen a lot, and make time for each other. Be with your best friend. Eat sushi.
