Our History - Isn't It Romantic?
 Park Avenue International founder and dream maker Victoria Koles believes in love – and storybook romance. She lived, breathed and starred in a real-life epic love affair for 24 years. Victoria met her best friend, lover and husband Richard Fishbein on a blind date arranged by their mutual best friends. “My best friend Dot kept telling me about her husband Greg’s best friend Richard, how perfect he was for me, and how we had to meet,” Victoria recalls. “But I was reluctant. He was a Jewish boy from Brooklyn and living in State College Pennsylvania, earning his doctorate degree; I was an Italian Catholic girl from the Bronx.” |
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Her resistance eventually wore down and on April 5, 1975 (Richard was now working and living in New Jersey) the four friends arranged to have dinner. Richard arrived first.
“The doorbell rang and there stood this perfect specimen of a man,” Victoria recalls. “He was wearing gray gabardine wool pants, a white turtleneck, Brooks Brothers navy blue blazer, and loafers. We just stared into each other’s eyes and I thought I was going to faint.”
“You know the saying, `he had me at hello,’ well Richard had me before hello,” says Victoria. “But he sealed the deal when we were leaving the restaurant and very gently, took my hand and tucked it into the crook of his arm. I remember thinking, `I’m going to marry this man.’
Her intuition proved right. Six days later, Richard appeared with peach roses (Victoria’s favorite, unbeknownst to him) and proposed.
When Richard died of cancer in 1999 at age 53, Victoria was devastated. But drawing strength from their great love affair, she combined her psychology degree and intuition with her business savvy, and founded Park Avenue International and the exclusive Coeur d’Or Societe (heart of Gold Society).