Todd A. Isaac

A Kick Out of Everything
From college on, it was Todd Isaac and Troy Dixon. Two young black men navigating the mostly white world of Wall Street traders. They played golf, they went to the Hamptons, but Mr. Dixon drew the line at attempting to ski. "Todd said: 'Why don't we learn to snowboard? That way we can say we've been skiing all along, and we're just trying something new."

So they did, and when they were on top of Whistler Mountain, Todd Isaac, who grew up in the Bronx and worked for Cantor Fitzgerald, would say, "Look at us!" And when they were in South Beach, or in the V.I.P. lounge of a swank Manhattan nightclub, or at the Super Bowl, he would say it again. "Look. At. Us."

It was persistence and charm that got him there. Those qualities got him his girlfriend, Sandra Perez, too. A quiet foil to his boisterous humor, she did not like him when they met, at a Valentine's dinner for singles. She is Puerto Rican, and Mr. Isaac made one too many jokes about flan.

But it was not long before she was picnicking in Central Park with him, poring over the Real Estate section to plan where they would live. "Todd would make you love him," said his brother, O'Dell Isaac. "If you didn't love him right away, he would work on you until you did."