He was a former Naval pilot returning to the sport after a decades-long hiatus.
She was a former world champion with the Soviet Union, nearly 20 years his junior.
But sports have a way of leveling the playing field. Carlo Zezza remembers meeting his now-wife, Margarita, at a 2007 race and wondering if they could be partners — in rowing, not necessarily romance.
A match on the water
When rowers reach 40, age groups matter significantly.
And Zezza, scoping out the competition, wanted to see if Margarita was taken.
“So, when I first met her, there’s a guy standing there. After learning her name, I said, 'How old are you?’” Carlo recalled.
Margarita’s current rowing buddy wasn’t too keen on Carlo’s scouting.
“And the guy beside her said, ‘You’re talking to my rowing partner,'” Carlo said with a chuckle.
Zezza ultimately got the last laugh. Before long, he and Margarita ended up marrying.
Now, Carlo is 89 and his union with Margarita has helped him to keep pushing and secure a unique place at the Head of the Charles Regatta, where they’ll both be on the water this weekend.
“There are rowers older than me,” he said. “I don’t know of any who are faster, who have been faster. You never know.”
A rowing dream
Rowing has been a part of the Zezzas’ lives for nearly as long as they can remember.
Carlo started at 14 in 1950 and went on to row crew at Harvard.
After Harvard, he joined the Navy and got a job that kept him on the move. So he put the oars down for about 40 years.
Then, one night in his 60s, a dream pulled him back.
“I was asleep dreaming that I was rowing in the basin in the dark with other boats which I could see by their lights,” he said. “And when I woke up enough of that dream stuck with me and I said to myself, ‘I should start rowing again.’”
He got back in a racing shell in 1998. The following year, he rowed the Head of the Charles — and has been back every year since.
A ticket beyond the Iron Curtain
For Margarita, who is 67, rowing was a ticket to see the world when her native Latvia was part of the USSR.
“There was this Iron Curtain. You couldn’t travel,“ she said. ”But when you were a good rower, and I discovered first you traveled for rowing camps all around the Soviet Union. But then, if you are good, you actually can go across the border and compete in western countries.“
Margarita was part of the Soviet duo that won a women’s double sculls final at the 1981 World Rowing Championships in Germany. And she just missed the cut for the 1980 Olympics in Moscow.
Rowing opened doors she probably wouldn’t have been able to unlock otherwise. Places like Italy, Switzerland and Germany suddenly became reachable.
Champions on the wall
Now, she and Carlo travel the world to row together. Just last month they were in Spain for the World Rowing Masters Regatta. It’s probably easier for them to name the countries in Europe they haven’t been to than the ones they have.
”Most of the countries in Western Europe. Not Portugal. Not Serbia. Not Estonia,“ Carlo said. ”But just about everywhere else.“
The Zezzas aren’t the type to go around bragging. But they don’t have to inside the Cambridge Boat Club. Their photos hang on the wall, marking course records each has set.
Brendan Mulvey, race director for the Head of the Charles, said there are about 25 athletes aged 80 and older participating in this year’s race.
Mulvey added that Carlo has been winning for a long time.
”And that’s what’s kind of pretty cool about some of these older athletes at Head of the Charles is some of them have been winning at Head of the Charles for decades,” he said. “You know, if you look at our historical list of winners, Carlo’s name is on there pretty much throughout.”
Carlo’s gotten to the age where many of his friends have stopped rowing competitively, mostly because of health.
”Or, in more than one instance, a wife who really didn’t accept the amount of time it took away from home life. I obviously I don’t have that problem,“ he said with a laugh.
But he’s not looking to stop rowing anytime soon. Especially not when he has Margarita as a partner.
”As long as the luck holds out and it continues being fun. I have her to pull me in the double,“ he said. ”As long as possible.“
The 2025 Head of the Charles Regatta takes place Oct. 17-19. You can find a racing schedule and watch the livestream here.
