Earlier this week, Warriors’ head coach Steve Kerr joined Bill Simmons on his podcast and told the story of how KNBR host Tom Tolbert met his wife Lorrie.
Kerr recalled a team dinner he, Tolbert and the rest of their University of Arizona teammates had together at a TGI Friday’s, and explained how Tolbert ended up finding his future love.
“We had these team dinners, I think we went to Fridays, and the waitress was just drop-dead gorgeous,” Kerr said. “All of the guys were like, ‘oh my gosh. Look at her. Look at her.’ And Kenny Lofton was totally trying to hit on her.”
Though things didn’t quite turn out for Lofton, who wound up playing 17 years of Major League Baseball, Tolbert came out of everything okay.
“He’s like trying to get her number and Tolbert not only gets her number,” Kerr said. “But he ends up marrying her. They’re happily married, they have three kids.”
On Tolbert & Lund on Wednesday night, the KNBR hosts listened to the audio from Kerr’s appearance on the Simmons podcast, and then Tolbert jumped in to share his own take on the story.
“True story,” Tolbert said. “Although he left out an interesting factoid from the story. So Lorrie was our waitress, she was actually the hostess the year before, but she had a boyfriend who worked at Friday’s. He was the cook at Friday’s. I don’t think he wore the buttons. But she was single this time. So two things that you may find interesting. Well, I’ll give you three. First, first girlfriend I ever had. I was 22. I never had a girlfriend…”
Lund: “You would date girls, no?”
Tolbert: “Yeah, date may be strong. I spent most of my time in the gym and playing poker. My free time was usually spent at the Y with my buddies and playing poker with my buddies. The reason I tell you that is because that’ll come back into play with my third point, maybe even my second point. At the end of the dinner, I asked her if you have any desserts you like, and she goes, I love this one, ‘Death by chocolate.’ I’m not a huge chocolate cake guy, but I like chocolate cake. The waitress is totally hot, you’d love to be able to go out with her, you’d love to impress her, so she brings me the chocolate dessert, I ate it and she comes back and goes, ‘What do you think?’ and I go, ‘It was alright.’ Smooth. Smooth. That was a good one. So I did end up getting her number, and I told her I would call her.”
Lund: “Did you offer her tickets to a game?”
Tolbert: “I did actually. This one worked out a lot better than the other one.”
Lund: “That’s probably why Lorrie knew, ‘Hey, he offered me tickets to.’”
Tolbert: “So I waited again for his girlfriend. I wasn’t like super, I was like, what am I going to say when I call her? So I waited a couple of days and I actually called her like four days later and she was not pleased that I waited that long. It’s a good thing I didn’t go to class often, no I actually did because if I didn’t I would have had to run. But she’s like, ‘You’re lucky I didn’t run across you going across to one of your classes going to campus because I was going to let you have it. You ask me for my number and then you don’t call me? I had nothing, no comeback whatsoever. And then, the coup de grace, then on our first date, we go to a steakhouse and then to a movie. What movie did we go see? Three Men and a Baby. Goodness gracious. And, by the way, I wore some sweet white parachute pants with nursing shoes.”
Lund: “And she still likes you?”
Tolbert: “I know, I must have had a hell of a personality because I did just about everything I could to flub that one up.”