Whoever said finding true love on a cruise ship was pure fantasy only possible on the 1980s hit TV series, The Love Boat, has never met Karina Kalanovic and Nemanja Kalanovic.
The love story of the Trini beautician-entrepreneur and the Serbian fitness trainer-entrepreneur could make for a thrilling movie or novel, Karina joked while sharing their journey with Sunday Guardian recently. She may have a point.
Finding herself pregnant at age 13, Karina married young and had a second child while still in her teens. Crossing parts with Kalanovic years later, while they both worked on a cruise ship, he embraced her and her two children. Language and cultural differences, distance and Karina's broken past could not keep them apart. Today, they are married and the proud parents of Ismiel, 18, Khalifa, 13, Vladimir, six, and Vasilisa-Katja, two.
She loves him because of his compassion, open-mindedness and sense of humour. He adores her resilience, loving nature...and beauty. For them, most days are like Valentine's Day, the couple said.
Back in 2013 just before they first met during Karina's second contract and Kalanovic's first on a cruise ship, she found him to be handsome when she first saw a picture of him. She worked in the spa as a beauty therapist, while he was a personal trainer/fitness instructor. Her co-workers had told her that he was not into girls as he never stole glances at any of the ladies. She went about her tasks, oblivious as to how her life would soon change.
“I got there and he would not stop staring at me,” Karina laughed.
People would even ask whether she knew him. She said she worked up the courage and approached him one day and they started talking from then.
Through a thick Serbian accent, punctuated with some Trini nuances, Kalanovic offered in his defence: “The reason I stared so much is that she was so pretty. I had never seen such African beauty. I was in such disbelief.”
Able to recall her hairstyle and her bright red lipstick back then, he continued:
“That was it; she didn't use much make-up. That's why I was staring. I was like: Wow! So beautiful.”
He said though he had seen African and African-American students in his country, Serbia–a former part of Yugoslavia located in Southeast Europe–he never really considered any as a partner until he saw Karina.
Karina and Nemanja Kalanovic on their wedding day in Serbia.
Karina, too, admitted that she had never thought someone like Kalanovic could be her husband.
“I saw the picture and I felt he was good-looking, but it never went past that. To think that I would actually build a life or a family, I never considered that. There are more and more interracial couples now, but people of colour and other races, too, have that notion that we won't be compatible because of different backgrounds and skin colour, upbringing, beliefs. He was all the way from Europe,” Karina said.
“And the cultures are so different,” Kalanovic chimed in. “This was actually one of the biggest obstacles for the two of us to actually work out. We were so fundamentally different, but we learned about each other and used the good things about our two cultures.”
Humour and laughter was something they had in common and it strengthened their bond. Karina was quick to add that her husband was always goofing around with her and telling people jokes about them.
“We would go to the grocery here and I would say: go bring that and he would tell people: you see, she beats me you know. I would get so vex, but then I would start laughing,” she said.
She said with Kalanovic, she can never be upset for long. They seldom argue as he is either quick to make her laugh or apologise even when he is right. There is hardly a dull moment with her passionate, good-natured husband who gets his jovial personality from his father, she said.
Kalanovic proposed while still on the cruise ship, just three months after meeting her.
“In our culture, you know how it is. We have to be with someone for a while. I was like: are you insane? Mind you, I was already falling in love with him because he was an amazing person. I questioned: Is this too soon? Will I be making a mistake?” Karina recalled.
A throwback of the Kalanovics and three of their children.
Courtesy the Kalanovics
She said the fact that their contract was up and they would have to return to their respective countries with the possibility of never seeing each other again compounded the pressure.
She said Kalanovic came up with a “crazy” plan since there was no consulate in T&T where she could get a Serbian visa to visit him. He suggested that she could go to Scotland and stay with her best friend who was Scottish, obtain her visa for Serbia via England and then travel to Serbia to meet him.
“I was convinced that this man wanted to human traffick me,” she laughed.
She said after disembarking their cruise ship, while at the airport in Miami on the verge of heading back to Trinidad, she called her mother, Keelan, for advice. She said despite the plane ticket to Trinidad she held in her hand after her mother told her she would probably wonder about it for the rest of her life, she bought a one-way ticket to Scotland.
Karina obtained her visa and left for Serbia where the couple reunited and later got engaged. They would endure the “roughest” part of their relationship in 2014 while there.
“My biggest problem was that the people would always stare at me. He would always comfort me, telling me: Baby, it's because you're beautiful. It was very uncomfortable for me. I didn't want to go outside sometimes.”
Karina said though uncomfortable since she had never experienced anything like it in her other travels, the looks she received were not hostile.
Kalanovic said he struggled to explain to his fiancée, at the time, that the people in his country kept looking at her simply because she looked different from them and not because they were racist. He said though his people could be somewhat xenophobic and tended to not like to see people from other countries visit theirs, most were still hospitable.
It was only after Kalanovic decided to turn it into something humorous that Karina felt better venturing outdoors. She said he told her to stare back whenever someone stared at her and he also started lightening the moments with silly antics. Their observers would either look away or they would all end up laughing.
Karina began to enjoy the food and other aspects of his culture. Finally, receiving another contract where they could work on the same vessel, they shipped out over six months later.
In 2015, Karina introduced Kalanovic to her children and parents in Trinidad. He loved the children from the moment he met them.
“You know how they say children can feel the love. After meeting him, my daughter, Khalifa (five at the time) would not leave his side. She followed him everywhere. His love for my kids was very natural,” she beamed.
This sealed the deal for Karina who never expected to find a partner who would wholeheartedly embrace her and her children. It was not long before they got married in Serbia that Karina described it as “a fairytale”. Kalanovic did all of the planning, she recalled. Her part was to show up for tastings, approvals, fittings...and of course, for the actual ceremony.
“If this guy ever decides to be anything less than what he is now, I'm going to wring him. He did everything understandable because it was in his country. He brought me to taste the cake, to see the venue, the décor, but it was so stress-free. Some people are 'bridezillas', but I had nothing to worry about except if my dress was going to fit and whether my hair was going to be laid nicely,” she said.
At the reception, Kalanovic played Jah Cure's “You'll Never Find” (no one in this lifetime to love you like I do) for their first dance and jumped to Machel's, “Happiest Man Alive” as the room packed with Serbian guests looked on somewhat confused. It was almost as if they were in their own world, Karina recalled.
“He took what was mine and made it his.”
Kalanovic said treating his bride-to-be well was simply a part of his culture. In fact, broken relationships and divorce are alien to them, he said.
“To have a family-oriented marriage and taking care of the spouse, the kids...we are very family-oriented people.”
Hence the reason his friends and family members were concerned that he would take on the responsibility of being a stepfather.
“Even my friends, they are successful and intelligent, they couldn't comprehend how I could watch other little people (stepchildren) as my own. It came natural(ly) because I love Karina, but they have never really seen that,” he said.
The young couple had an even harder task to win over Kalanovic's conservative Orthodox Christian parents. Though he grew up in Serbia's bustling capital, Belgrade with its two and a half million people, the tradition was hard to shake. Since Kalanovic was the elder of their two sons, his parents were looking forward to him marrying a Serb. They were “very stiff” and “old-fashioned” even after the wedding until Karina became pregnant with their first grandchild, Vladimir.
Going against the norm and standing up for his beloved and her children simply fuelled Karina's love for Kalanovic. Despite the cultural differences that they had to overcome, she said she would have happily settled in her husband's country. They only live in T&T because he wanted to, she laughed. Kalanovic explained why.
“The cultural differences is a very long story. For example, you guys never experienced any significant economic crisis. We in the 90s literally didn't have food on our tables. There are certain things that we do, that you cannot even comprehend. When I came here, everybody is so relaxed about everything and Serbians are so uptight,” he said.
Kalanovic was referring to the Yugoslav Wars, separate but related ethnic conflicts and wars of independence that occurred from 1991 to 2001 in the former Yugoslavia. As a result, Yugoslavia broke up into Bosnia and Herzegovina, Croatia, Macedonia, Montenegro, Serbia and Slovenia.
Kalanovic said he was usually quick to notice economic changes that other people here in T&T did not seem to see and he often predicts economic fallout like rising food prices because he has been through them.
“The mentality of Serbians is that even if you have the money and you are successful, you still have that concern of somebody taking away everything that you worked for.”
He felt that the ethnic conflicts he has seen were triggered by politics. His experiences make him value political stability, freedom and money much more. He said his people work harder when they go abroad.
“We are masters of survival and we need very little to be satisfied with life.”
Kalanovic used his knack for survival to invest in online training and venture into marketing consultancy since the pandemic. He now regards himself as a serial entrepreneur. More than a year before, he had encouraged Karina that she had the talent to open her own spa, Spa by K, at Calcutta Street, St James, in 2019. Having managed spa facilities on various cruise lines, she had started a door-to-door spa service in 2018 but lacked the confidence to go fully in. They opened another spa in Mc Bean, Couva, two weeks ago. The location of their third facility “is loading”, Karina jested.
She admitted that because of her husband she is far from the broken person she was years ago. Growing up in Paramin and then Cameron Hill, Diego Martin, she and her sister became rebellious and fell in with the wrong company when her mother and father separated. Pregnant at 13 with her eldest son, her mother refused to make her terminate the pregnancy and she ended up marrying at an early age. She gave birth to her first daughter at age 19 and found herself divorced by her early 20s, and uncertain about her and her children's future.
Karina said her eldest daughter, Khalifa, is still as close to Kalanovic as the day she met him and they often talk about life and dreams. Her mother and father are also fond of him.
“It happens when you see someone who takes your broken daughter and helps repair her. They can see a total change in me.”
One event the pair is looking forward to is the next full Carnival and J'Ouvert. Though Kalanovic was accustomed to the party scene in his country, he was mesmerised by T&T Carnival with its enchanting history, costumes, music and unity.
“You people are genuinely happy people, not worried about life most of the time, and that is what I like,” he said.
When asked about his favourite Trini foods, he replied: “Roti”, “roti” and “roti”. His wife agreed that he could eat the meal every day, adding that she had perfected the art of making the Serbian dish, palacinka, which are a heavier version of crepes with a sweet fruit, jam or cheese filling.
The bubbly beautician said she wished all women could experience a husband like hers, adding if only she could market Serbian men to Trini ladies. But Kalanovic joked that he was not so sure that all of them would be like him. They burst out laughing.