By MAREN ANGUS
To anyone, the story of Franklin residents Jenae Cherry and Brad Brach would sound like a typical boy walks into a bar and meets a girl story. However, in their case, it’s anything but that.
Cherry, at the time, had just started playing music full-time downtown on Broadway. It was a Wednesday night when a couple of guys from out of town walked in.
“It was me, the bartender and the band, so I was trying to make them hang around,” Cherry said. “I ended up convincing them to stay all four hours, and then Brad asked me to lunch for the next day that night.”
Little did she know that night at Paradise Park that she was on her way to become a baseball fan.
Brach was a pitcher for the Tucson Padres at the time and was in town playing against the Nashville Sounds. He was called up in September and Cherry started traveling back and forth between Nashville and the west coast.
Everything started to change around MLB Opening Day in early April 2012. Cherry had two flights booked and was waiting for a text from Brach to tell her which one to take. It was either to San Diego for Opening Day or Tucson, Arizona, for Triple-A. The text told her Tucson, but she felt like she needed to keep him company during the drive so she met him in San Diego, instead.
After a quick lunch, the two began their drive to Tucson when Brach got a phone call from a number with the San Diego area code.
“We took off for Tucson and were probably about 45 minutes in, we were somewhere in the desert when he gets a random call from a number he didn’t know,” Cherry said. “He was like, ‘oh wouldn’t that be funny if this was them telling me to turn around.’”
That was exactly what happened and they turned around.
Brach proposed the day before Opening Day in 2013, and they wed in November 2013.
All-Star Journey
Brach was traded to the Baltimore Orioles before the 2014 season and since then has been a mainstay in the Orioles’ bullpen.
This past July, the team was in Los Angeles playing the Dodgers when Brach heard his wife on the phone with someone in the bathroom and thought it was really weird.
“We were in L.A. and I woke to a missed call and a text from [Orioles manager] Buck Showalter that said, ‘Jenae this is Buck Showalter can you give me a call when Brad’s not around,’” Cherry said. “I went into the bathroom and called him and he just wanted to let me know that Brad made the All-Star team and he wanted me to tell him.”
The All-Star Game was held in San Diego, a place that will always be special for Brachs.
“When Jenae and I went on the red carpet, it was incredible the amount of people telling me, ‘Welcome back, thanks for everything, we wish we still had you,’” Brach said. “It was a little emotional hearing that stuff. I wasn’t sure that I did anything memorable there, so it’s nice knowing that I made a little bit of an impact. It was definitely something Jenae and I will always remember.”
Embracing the Brachs
The Orioles have been supportive of not just their set-up man, but the career of his wife as well.
“It’s amazing that people like Vin Scully and the announcers here in Baltimore have such great things to say about her,” Brach said. “They mention us hand-in-hand and to me, that’s awesome.”
This season alone, Cherry has played a pre-game show, performed the National Anthem and most recently performed a post-game show debuting a new song inspired by the Orioles called, “Don’t Miss the Magic.”
“I was just so happy and proud of her. I’m so glad I was able to go out there for the pre-game concert. If I closed my eyes, it was exactly how she would’ve been in front of five people at Paradise Park on a Tuesday afternoon,” Brach said.
“I’m never able to express to her how awesome I think she does and hopefully she knows that I think she’s amazing.”
Life in Franklin
Growing up in New Jersey, living in Tennessee never crossed Brach’s mind. He really didn’t know much about the city of Nashville until he was in Triple-A.
The couple moved to Franklin from Bellevue in 2014 and chose it for their future plans on needing to be in a great school system and getting a little further out of town.
“We absolutely love Franklin,” Cherry said. “We live kind of out in the country so it’s nice to feel we are in a private little area and only 30 minutes from downtown.
“We live right behind Trinity Park so he will go and throw up there sometimes and we take Belle (dog) up there. He sometimes leaves baseballs in the dugout up there so if anyone finds them over, those are Brad’s.”
