GROWING up on the Hawaiian island of Oahu, Brooke Alexander had wild hair, a loud whistle and a strong aloha spirit. To this day she gives out leis the way other people give out mints. And she’s always the first in the ocean, the last out.
One friend, Beth Moran, described her this way: “Strong, strong, strong, but as sweet as it gets.”
Her sister, Brett Alexander Estes, remembered: “She was always forging ahead. When she was 10, she had a paper route, a big paper route. She wanted action, and she wanted reward.”
At 18, she arrived in New York on a one-way plane ticket. By the time she was 39, she had a successful career as a model and soap opera actress, a sunny one-bedroom apartment on the Upper West Side and a big circle of friends she calls her ‘ohana (Hawaiian for family). Yet she yearned to be a mother, and was known to wear a T-shirt with the message, “I can’t believe I forgot to have children.”
She was the last person anyone thought would be single at 39. “Why would this gorgeous, talented, amazing woman be alone?” said Bill Block, a film producer and friend. “She loved the rockers, the great-looking bad boys, and they never panned out.”
Ms. Alexander, who regularly appears in television commercials, now thinks she wasn’t calculating enough about marriage. “I was too carefree about it, and I ended up sitting alone in a room,” she said.
She forged ahead and joined Single Mom by Choice, an organization that guides single women through the process of becoming mothers. “I knew we’re given one life and if there’s something incredibly important to you and there’s an open door, go through it and give it everything you got,” Ms. Alexander said. The organization helped her find a sperm donor and on Jan. 8, 2004, she gave birth to a son, Jace, in a room full of female friends. “I wasn’t alone,” she said. “I just didn’t have a husband.”
When Jace was a year old, Ms. Alexander started thinking about dating again. She placed an online ad, which was a disillusioning experience. Then, in November 2005, a friend said she wanted to introduce her to Marko Zelenovic, a handsome tennis pro from Croatia who is known among his clients as the Croatian Sensation.
At first Ms. Alexander resisted. “I’m in my 40s, I’m a mother,” Ms. Alexander remembered telling her friend. “I don’t date guys who are named Marko and teach tennis in Southampton.”
Her friend persuaded her to have lunch with Mr. Zelenovic. “He was in a banquette, facing the wall, not looking around the room,” Ms. Alexander, now 46, recalled. “He was a gentleman, waiting for his date.”
Lunch lasted for hours. “We engaged right away,” Ms. Alexander said. “We really dug each other. We had a little tennis volley going back and forth.”
Mr. Zelenovic, now 38, moved to the United States in his teens, and began playing tennis and then teaching it all over the country. Friends describe him as a man’s man who hates soap operas — on television and in real life.
“Once you get caught in that whirlpool of feelings, you’re toast,” he said. In his opinion, New Yorkers see too many shrinks and own too many gadgets. “They live in a world of distraction,” he said. “Where is the soul in all of this?”
He was not exactly looking for a single mother, but he was expecting one. “Back home, people read coffee grounds, like reading tea leaves,” he said. “When I was 16, this woman told me I’m going to marry a single mom.”
Soon after their first meeting, he left to visit his parents in Croatia, telling Ms. Alexander he would call her when he returned. “And guess what?” she said. “The guy called.” From the airport.
She was at Elaine’s on the Upper East Side, and he took a cab there. “I was very aware of the first time his knee pressed up against mine,” she said. “It was like two magnets connected.”
They were rarely apart after that. “I spent a lot of money on baby sitters,” she said.
He moved into her apartment soon after they met, where he slept on her couch for three years, out of respect for Jace.
“Marko was a gentleman,” Ms. Alexander said. “I was always a stickler for that.”
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