People and Their Pets: A Look at Notable New Yorkers and their Four-Legged Friends

By Jane Pontarelli.

We all know pets are a very important part of our lives, and sometimes their impact on us is more significant than our two-legged counterparts. I know what they mean to us, and to the tens of thousands of people they help every day.

In future issues, I will cover more about my personal life experiences with pets, but for now it's not about me. Allow me to introduce you to the first in my series on people and pets: Roberta Meadow, party and event planner (and dog-lover) extraordinaire.

Several years ago, having recently retired as a successful owner/stylist of a major manufacturing company, Roberta was not aware that she was going to embark on a new phase of her life. While walking her beloved King Charles Spaniels, Tyler and Clancy, in Central Park, she ran into a former clothing manufacturer who was walking his dogs, and they began catching up on their lives. He told Roberta he had just fired his party planner who was doing his son's Bar Mitzvah. Roberta knew the details of his life and his family. She wound up planning the Bar Mitzvah, and the rest, as they say, is history. She went on to plan his two daughters' weddings, and his older son's remarriage, and from there, countless other events.

Roberta Meadow LTD was born all because of her dogs. They are her constant source of inspiration, and they stand guard on top of their brocade-covered baskets in her office. Clancey, sadly, has gone on to doggie heaven, and there is a new King Charles in Roberta's life named Pushain.

Having grown up with parents who always entertained, with beautiful crystal and silver and elaborate tableware and centerpieces, along with the fact that her grandmother Rose was an antique collector, Roberta was already a wealth of party-planning knowledge. Add to that her corporate party planning experience, and success was inevitable. Roberta's forte is listening to her clients' concepts and needs; she understands what they want before they do, and she knows how to execute.

Considering her business stemmed from her four-legged family members, Roberta has even taken her dogs to Europe for a walk down the aisle in a medieval Italian Villa before 250 international clients. She has created a 50s-themed birthday party, set in a 1950s diner, all before a glittery, hard-to-please Hamptons crowd, and has done a reality stars' wedding on TV at the Pierre. Of course she also does the traditional wedding, but always with a creative twist; she has had a food truck waiting outside a major hotel at 2 a.m., giving out pizza bagels and the New York Times—an example of her philosophy that the devil is in the details.

Roberta is well known and admired by her doggy lovers and clients, and has even planned a celebrity wedding in a stable in the Hamptons with chandeliers and live horses—just one more example of the way she thinks outside the box. But no matter how much success and ingenuity she exhibits, her company's beginnings can always be attributed to a walk in the park with her two best (furry) friends.

Roberta can be reached at (917) 923-9069 or
rmeadow7@aol.com