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Keri (Sherri Saum) and Antonio (the late Kamar de los Reyes) had the makings of super couple status. |
Criminal psychology professor Keri Reynolds came to Llanview, Pennsylvania believing her father was District Attorney Hank Gannon. When it turned out to be his shady brother Randall James “R. J.” Gannon, a hot mess was on the verge of unraveling in this poor young woman’s life. Although she didn’t initially favor Antonio Vega— R. J.’s sworn enemy— Keri soon fell hard for the former inmate turned police officer, helping him earn his required credit and embark on a positive path that included an award-winning paper.
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Before Antonio leaves for New York City, the gorgeous professor dotes on her former student on December 17, 2001 around the holidays. |
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Unbeknownst to them, their main antagonist is outside watching, desperate to keep them apart. By the end, R. J. will be victorious. |
As Keri and Antonio’s pure romance blossomed, R. J. kept standing in the way, stalking Keri, ensuring that he always interrupted Keri and Antonio’s intimate moments. Antonio’s mother Carlotta wasn’t a fan of Keri either— insulting Keri’s homemade dinner, purposely spicing up her food at the diner. The doomed couple tried to live apart due to their warring families— a regular ole Romeo and Juliet situation complete with their own signature music. And if a couple has a signature music on a soap opera, you know that it’s going to be epic!
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Cutesy moments: Antonio, Keri, and little Matthew going upstairs together holding hands on New Year’s Eve, Antonio calls Keri and later comes over to wish her a goodnight, and Antonio bringing Keri an apple for a second time and enjoying it with her on campus. |
Eventually, Keri and Antonio reunited and Carlotta accepted them as a bonafide match.
R. J. continued scheming including Shawna’s bogus charges as an attempt to get Keri fired from Llanview University, not considering the repercussions of this colossal lie. It’s understandable that the man hates Antonio with every last bit of his soul. R. J. has to understand that the allegations were bound to follow Keri even to Stanford— a position she was offered in Palo Alto, California, home to Antonio’s ex-wife Andy. R. J. was not demonstrating fatherly love and care. He desired to control a daughter like Tristan did Ariel, to break her heart and spirit and one up Antonio. Animosity and rage blinded him to the fact that Antonio and Keri were soulmates.
Thankfully, Antonio makes things right for his love— he gifts Keri with a gem his grandmother gave him for good luck and uses every last resource to counteract Shawna and her friends’ false testimonies. He also shows his own award-winning paper’s progression— from four drafts to the completed version. They have a party afterward at the diner, Carlotta even ending it early to give Antonio and Keri the swoony kind of alone time.
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The angst and yearning stage: Antonio and Keri had difficulty trying to maintain distance during their brief breakup (after the R. J. reveal). When Antonio wins the MacKenzie Award, the tension is real. Keri’s green bug breaks down and Antonio fixes it. Unfortunately, R. J. (the stalker) interrupts them, gleefully rubbing it in that Keri is moving in with him. |
R. J. continued manipulating and gaslighting Keri, hoping to destroy not only her and Antonio, but herself too. Yet, one of Keri’s bravest moments was during “live week” (the first ever done on a soap opera). She told R. J. that his tricks were tiring and that “if he forced her to choose, he would not like the results!” She then cancels his surprise birthday party in spite.
From there, Keri and Antonio’s relationship strengthened.
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Irony alert: Jennifer Rappaport (Jessica Morris) tells Keri (Sherri Saum) about Cristian’s unsettling connection to Natalie Buchanan. A year later, Antonio will fall for Natalie’s sister, damsel-in-constant-distress Jessica. |
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Dr. Rae Cummings (Linda Dano) gives Keri an old camera that has old film in it— upstarting Keri’s desire to find the man in the photo. Investigative mode Keri (similar to Sunset Beach’s reporter Vanessa Hart) is grateful to have her boo Antonio’s aid.
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As a celebration for publishing her first book, Keri treats Antonio to French cuisine and then later flan at his mother’s restaurant. Carlotta tells Antonio about Keri’s $50,000 debt (planted by R. J.). Weeks later, Antonio plans a hot tub interlude, whispering Spanish anecdotes to his love, eventually revealing a surprise to an island getaway. |
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Antonio and Keri’s 2002 summer Hawaii trip had everything— romance, mystery adventure, and fun times! After they follow an intriguing trail, they end the trip with surfing, bike riding, and a marriage proposal. Lots of wonderful moments between them showcasing back when soap operas had budgets for these kinds of stories.
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Keri is mysteriously ill and Antonio takes care of her. After Antonio leaves for work, R. J. takes advantage of Keri’s condition— using her as his alibi when he helps Allison Perkins and Lindsay Rappaport escape prison. He resets all the clocks and records Keri’s TV program on brides/weddings while she’s asleep. When she awakes, Keri truly believes that she’s watching her show at its real intended time. |
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Keri breaks up with Antonio because she felt he didn’t trust her. |
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Antonio doesn’t want to accept the engagement ring back, still persistent that his gut is right about R. J.— who once again comes between Antonio and Keri’s beautiful thing. Keri never learns about her father’s crimes. |
R. J. betrays Keri again, a running gag— and a blind, clueless Keri remains steadfast in her belief of his innocence. When Lindsay reveals everything in a single phone call thinking it was R. J. answering, Keri does not recognize the woman’s voice.
Keri and Antonio have another breakup.
A hurt, inconsolable Antonio gets into a fight with R. J., shoots Ben Davidson, and has a one night stand with Liz— Keri’s mother. Any hope for Antonio and Keri’s reconciliation has vanished. There’s no coming back from the latter. Antonio once told Shawna he didn’t do one-night-stands yet here we are. Plus, it doesn’t help that he keeps flashing back to that night and feeling grateful for Liz bringing him off the ledge.
After Keri pens Antonio a letter that he finds in her office (gawd they’re soooooo romantic), they get back together in her Chicago hometown without discussing why they broke up, why R. J. will still be a problem. Instead, they revert into habitual “ignorance is bliss.” Antonio does tell Keri that he had a one night stand during their break. It remains the beginning of the end for them anyway. You would think that as close as these two were, Keri would have shared photos containing the woman who raised her. Thus, this messy, strangely incestuous quad ties Antonio and R. J. together— being that they both created “children” with Liz. When Liz realizes she cannot carry a child to term, Keri is to be surrogate. That’s soap opera logic.
Nothing ever makes complete sense.
So we’re strapped in for an awful baby storyline when Antonio and Keri deserve better material. Earlier that year, they weren’t ready for children and now a little girl is on the way. It turns out the baby is not Liz and Antonio’s— Keri’s and Antonio’s likely conceived during their Hawaii vacation. Yet, we are robbed of celebrating this fortunate news since a crushed Keri decides to leave town with the baby in tow. Grossly enough, Keri names her daughter Jamie after R. J.— a man who plotted Keri and Antonio’s demise since the beginning.
This third and final breakup—again initiated by Keri—put the nail on them.
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Keri’s 2003 surprise birthday party had foreshadowing galore. Her saying she couldn’t wait to celebrate many birthdays with Antonio when this would be her last. Antonio is crashing due to learning that the baby Keri is carrying may be his and Liz’s. Except fate did Antonio and Keri a bittersweet favor— meaning she had been pregnant before their first breakup. What a heartbreaking discovery. |
A step from being similar to
Sunset Beach’s deranged
Virginia Harrison, Keri began to suffer the same writing pipeline as Julia Lindsay on
As the World Turns— the good girl transforming into a completely different character in order to make her competition look better. Keri (who cruelly faked her and Jamie’s deaths) returns from hiding in Toronto. She centers Antonio as the object of her desires as opposed to her child and professional career. Perhaps it would have been easier to develop a postpartum storyline dealing with Keri’s painful discovery of her mother and Antonio’s one night stand (which caused Keri’s early labor in the first place) and the aftermath of Jamie’s maternity.
Thus, Keri’s constant lies— lashing out at Antonio, pretending that he was physically abusing her, and harming Jessica’s kitten was such a severe opposite of an honest, smart, sweet-natured woman. This is the same person who had Antonio searching all over Hawaii for “Mark?” The same who joked about her financial situation? The same who wrote thoughtful cards and letters?
The writers did not want this couple to thrive, to have any longevity. It had to become as ugly as possible. The optics were terrible— the comparison to Jessica (who Antonio would later have try to replace Keri as Jamie’s mother). Keri ultimately was a shadow of her former self, completely unrecognizable. You would almost believe that this was an evil twin masquerade. Her last months onscreen seemed a requirement to strengthen the foundation for Antonio and Jessica— who were already sharing scenes during Keri’s final trimester— aka chem testing.
Furthermore, R. J. hides Keri’s suicide note addressed to Antonio. Instead of doing right by honoring his daughter’s final wishes, R. J. frames Antonio for her murder while trying to gain custody of Jamie— another little girl he would have potentially undermined and ruined. Such a sick man.
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Keri and Antonio were the only people of color pairing nominated and one of the newer relationships for the Daytime Emmys America’s Favorite Couple Award in 2002, especially huge considering that Todd and Blair and Bo and Nora are still the most known on One Life to Live. |
It is undeniable that Keri and Antonio’s chemistry was off the charts— smoldering, intense, and oh so addictive. It seemed truly believable that these two struck their first foray into love and that nothing could get in their way, especially late 2001- summer 2002. Yet most remember Antonio’s later pairings more so and not the incredible woman Jamie’s mother was. If only Keri realized the extent of R. J.’s villainy, if only Antonio’s one night stand never happened (he once told Shawna that they weren’t his thing)… Keri and Antonio would have had the storybook soap wedding of their dreams and raised Jamie surrounded in that love. Secrets are always revealed in soap opera, but somehow R. J. got away with destroying Keri’s life.
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Antonio and Keri. |
Still, is it any wonder that portrayers Sherri Saum and Kamar de los Reyes fell for each other offscreen too? Our hearts go out to Sherri as Kamar passed away from cancer on Christmas Eve last year. They had been married seventeen years and share twins, last starring together in former costar Michael Easton’s 2017 short film, First Strike Butcher Knife.
The Keri and Antonio clips were made possible with the incredible archival channels of OG Soap Fan, AMC & OLTL Fans, and the Wild Hearts Loser Club OLTL playlists exception of December 17, 2001 from Cheap83x21 on YouTube. I highly recommend binging them for the weekend, stopping before the second breakup. Their tragic enthrallment reminds me of why I loved soap operas growing up and why constant changing writing regimes can ruin what could have been exceptional super couple history. Their later months give sabotage, ensuring a tainted legacy for Keri’s character, a woman who said, “I thought that my gift was helping people to open their minds and see things in a new way— and I thought I was going to do that forever.”
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So beautiful. |
Props to Sherri and Kamar for gifting viewers the treasure that was Keri and Antonio. May an old pairing from twenty plus years ago continue to flourish in the minds of those who will forever fan them.
edited* May 6, 2024