Hello, everybody.  My name is Vince Gatton, and I'm Gail's "Man of Honor" here tonight ---- which, while not unheard of, is still a rare and extraordinary title to hold at a wedding.  This shouldn't surprise us, though, where Gail and Ari are concerned.  They embody the rare and the extraordinary.
 
I met Gail when we were high school students auditioning for the University of Illinois theatre department.  Gail made a vivid first impression, not only because out of the hundreds of us there to audition, she was brave enough to go first.  She did a monologue in which she gave some no-good schmo a piece of her mind, and then sang "Matchmaker, Matchmaker" from Fiddler on the Roof.  (It's funny to recall that on this day of all days.)  From this audition, three things about Gail were clear: she was sharp as a tack, tremendously funny, and hopelessly romantic.
 
Later, when we became friends at school, I saw the contradictory ways these different aspects of Gail's personality pulled at her.  Here was an ardent feminist who dismissed Cinderella as transgressive, but who swooned over The Little Mermaid and The Princess Bride.  This was a girl who at the age of fourteen was so moved by a speech of Mario Cuomo's at the Democratic National Convention that she devoted herself then and there to a serious life of noble public service.   But she was also a funny lady who did stand-up comedy and would stoop to almost any depth for a cheap laugh.  So while she was already shaping up to be a Woman who Ran with Wolves and Did Too Much, she was always frustrated with herself for not doing more.  With all the problems in the world for Gail to solve single-handedly, wasn't all this comedy and theatre business a little frivolous?  If not downright selfish?  What would Mario Cuomo think?
 
And while being funny got attention, romance did not always come easily to this hard-fighting, intellectually rigorous, morally challenging young woman in a world where the girls who did well with guys tended to be more…pliant.  The word most often used by men to describe Gail was "intense."  I won't ever forget Gail venting her envy of other women's seemingly effortless ability to attract men: there she stood in our kitchen, curly hair pulled up, thick glasses, pink quilted long underwear and fuzzy slippers shouting "WHY AM I ALWAYS THE FUNNY ONE????"
 
Well, we can all see how that turned out.  
 
She was indeed a rare bird, contradictory and endlessly fascinating, all unexpected angles and surprising soft spots.  Those of us that love Gail know that loving her inspires a strange sort of pride, a kind of vicarious vanity.  To love Gail is to always feel like shouting to the world, "Look what I found!  Look what I'm a part of!"
 
Today, at her Cinderella happy ending, I feel that more than ever.
 
If you know about Gail's work training police in bias crime, or about the amazing show she created with Christian Murphy, you know that Gail has found a way to use comedy to truly change the world.  You might also be familiar with a concept from their show they call The Sensitive Swashbuckler.  He is a gentle soul, able to cook and write poetry, but at the same time is a virile man's man with a smoldering sex appeal who can grab a woman forcefully and sweep her off her feet.  He's an impossible ideal, he's not supposed to actually exist.  But in Ari, Gail has found him.  For her birthday one year, Ari made some calls, wrote to a few people, and for her birthday gift, Gail received a letter thanking her for her dedication to public service and social justice issues.  The letter was from Mario Cuomo.
 
Yeah.  This guy is good.  A pitch-perfect romantic, yet macho enough to be doing construction work on the basement --- and have the biceps to show for it.  He's a very rare creature himself.  I'm so glad I got the chance to meet Ari's family and friends this week, because I was half-suspecting that Gail had simply willed him into being.  But, no, it turns out this impossibly perfect man has been out there, living his own extraordinary life --- and it happened that my friend Marta was friends with him.
 
To have been a link in that chain - from Gail to me to Marta to Ari -- to have been a piece of the puzzle that brought these two rare and extraordinary human beings together, is my true honor here today.
 
So, my toasts:
 
To Bob and Carole Stern:   
Thank you for producing this astonishing creature, and for releasing her into the wild;
 
To Ari Frede:
Look what you found!  Look what you're now a part of!
 
And to Gail Stern: 
It is as true today as it has ever been:
The funny one is the beautiful one;
The gifted one is the giving one;
And the loving one is the one most
deeply, deeply loved.
 
Congratulations to you both on this happy ending, and Gail, I lay on you the most joyous "I told you so" of all.