Knot news . . .
The “Bronx Bulldog” got hitched.
Chicago Police Supt. Garry McCarthy, 55, who hails from New York, married Chicago attorney Kristin Barnette — whom he privately refers to as “The Viking” — on New Year’s Eve.
“We wanted to do it on New Year’s Eve to celebrate a new beginning; a special way to enter the New Year,” said Barnette, 35, a personal-injury attorney at Kralovec, Jambois and Schwartz — where she will soon hang a shingle emblazoned with a new “McCarthy” handle.
“No assigned seating. No wedding attendants except my parents as witnesses,” said Barnette, who wore a floor-length, champagne-colored gown.
The couple entertained 274 guests at a romping after-dinner party following their civil marriage, including a retinue of McCarthy’s New York City cops pals.
They paid homage to their respective hometowns by serving their cities’ specialty hot dogs following a balloon drop on New Year’s Eve.
Dog versus Dawg: Barnette’s Chicago dogs were served with a traditional pickle, mustard and other ingredients versus McCarthy’s “New York Dirty Water Dog” version with a special onion-based sauce.
But true to her vegetarian lifestyle, Barnette added a turkey dog option.
The couple, who kiddingly bill their marriage as a “Law and Order” union, also danced to a 1960s-70s Bronx disco topped off with Frank Sinatra’s renditions of “Chicago” and “New York, New York.”
It’s a second marriage for McCarthy and the first for Barnette, a Chicago native of Scandinavian descent — hence the sobriquet “The Viking.” Her uncle, Randy Barnette, is married to Ald. Marge Laurino. Barnette’s best friend, Judge Elizabeth Budzinski, performed the marriage ceremony before a two-level, candlelight fete with a sunken dance floor.
Sneed exclusively tipped the couple’s engagement in September, when McCarthy jokingly stated: “When Kristin proposes, one complies.”
“Look, I like keeping my private life private, but I finally met my match,” added McCarthy, whose divorce was finalized earlier in 2014.
“I’ve gone through some extreme life changes in the past few years: coming to Chicago, going through a long separation and subsequent divorce process which ended a 28-year marriage — and having a heart attack,” the city’s top cop said.
“I’m not gun-shy and feel this will be a very positive move in my life,” said McCarthy, who has two daughters from his previous marriage.
McCarthy also credited Barnette with saving his life.
“She did it,” McCarthy, who suffered a heart attack last summer, told Sneed earlier this year.
“She is the one,” said McCarthy, who has changed his eating habits and is successfully on the mend.
“I didn’t want to go to the hospital, and she not only insisted because I had chest pains . . . but I had no choice but to go.”
“That decision saved my life.”
Although it was not publicly known at the time, Barnette’s involvement in saving McCarthy’s life eventually led to another decision: a proposal of marriage in September, when McCarthy got down on his knee at the Signature Room on the 95th floor of the John Hancock Building while the sun was setting.
As the New Year approached, Sneed is told the newly married couple chose “True Companion” as their wedding dance.
It was their way to not only dance into 2015 with a new marriage and their closest friends, but also to plan to make Chicago their future.
Mayor Rahm Emanuel was invited but had already planned a family vacation to Chile.
McCarthy calls Chicago “my adopted city.”
“It’s our home,” said Barnette, lauded in the Chicago Law Bulletin as a top Lawyer Under 40 and recently appointed to the Illinois Supreme Court’s Character and Fitness Committee — and the only child of Noreen and Timothy Barnette — who has no intention of moving far from her parents and plans to have children.
I guess Chicago just won that round.
