Personal Life
While playing with the Florida Panthers, Luongo met his wife, Gina Cerbone, at a team hangout called the Pizza Time Trattoria. Gina is the daughter of the Italian restaurant owner, Umberto Cerbone, who is originally from Naples, while Gina's mother is from Palermo. Luongo proposed to Gina under the Bridge of Sighs in Venice in 2004. They lived in Broward County, Florida, during his tenure with the Panthers. However within a month of moving into a new home in Florida, Luongo was traded to Vancouver. They subsequently moved into the Vancouver neighbourhood of Yaletown, while spending Luongo's off-seasons in Fort Lauderdale, Florida. Their first child, Gabriella, was born on March 27, 2008. Luongo had been chosen as a starting goaltender for the 2008 NHL All-Star Game, but he chose not to attend in order to be with Gina, who was pregnant with Gabriella at the time and had returned to Florida. On December 27, 2010, Gina gave birth to the couple's second child, Gianni Antonio.
Luongo is involved with several charities. Like many Canucks players, he has spent time with Canuck Place, a children's hospice in Vancouver. He also sponsors a spectator's box in Rogers Arena that is reserved for underprivileged children to attend Canucks games. At the end of games in which he has been named one of the three stars, he has been known to give away his goalie stick to a fan in the crowd. In the summer of 2009, he hosted the Roberto Luongo Golf Open to benefit Montreal Children's Hospital, Sainte-Justine Hospital, and a seniors centre network in Saint-Léonard.
In addition to being an avid golfer, Luongo also enjoys playing poker.
In September 2011, Luongo was inducted into the Italian Walk of Fame in Toronto, Ontario.
Read more about this topic: Roberto Luongo
Famous quotes containing the words personal and/or life:
“Fine art is the subtlest, the most seductive, the most effective instrument of moral propaganda in the world, excepting only the example of personal conduct; and I waive even this exception in favor of the art of the stage, because it works by exhibiting examples of personal conduct made intelligible and moving to crowds of unobservant unreflecting people to whom real life means nothing.”
—George Bernard Shaw (1856–1950)
“How many women ... waste life away the prey of discontent, who might have practised as physicians, regulated a farm, managed a shop, and stood erect, supported by their own industry, instead of hanging their heads surcharged with the dew of sensibility, that consumes the beauty to which it at first gave lustre ...”
—Mary Wollstonecraft (1759–1797)