ST. LOUIS — His name is Tony Holmes, but if you’re an NHL fan, you likely know him as “Tony X.”
For those who aren’t familiar, or need a refresher, Holmes was at his apartment in St. Louis on April 25, 2016, planning to watch a St. Louis Cardinals game on TV. But the St. Louis Blues were in the playoffs against the Chicago Blackhawks, and Game 7 of their series was airing on the network’s primary channel, Fox Sports Midwest, with the Cardinals game moved to an alternate channel.
Holmes, 26 years old at the time, was aware of the Blues but didn’t play hockey or pay attention to it.
“It wasn’t my thing, and I just never gave it a chance,” the now-36-year-old tells The Athletic. “I have no idea why I didn’t change the channel. But it was St. Louis and Chicago, and the two cities have always had a rivalry, no matter what sport.”
Holmes stayed tuned in, and like he does with other sports, began “live tweeting” the game from his account, @soIoucity.
“This the first time I’ve ever watched hockey and this s— has been LIT for these first 45 seconds.”
“White people been hiding hockey from us for years bruh. This s— lit.”
He cringes now at some of the choices, like writing “lit” multiple times.
“In 2016, that was just the word,” he says. “Back then, you couldn’t go anywhere without hearing that something was lit.”
As far as the curse words, Holmes laughs because he never speaks that way in front of his parents, Tony and Scarlet.
“My mother said, ‘Oh no, I don’t think that’s my son!’” he says.
But in the moment, Holmes was glued to the game — tied 2-2 in the third period — and grabbed for his phone.
“I don’t know who this (Patrick) Kane guy is, but we gotta stop him.”
In his quiet third-floor apartment, Holmes shrieked when the Blues’ Troy Brouwer scored the go-ahead goal. But after what happened in that same building during the Cardinals’ epic come-from-behind win in Game 6 of the 2011 World Series, he couldn’t celebrate too loudly.
“I was jumping up and down and my neighbors called the police on me,” he says. As time ticked down, the Blackhawks pulled goalie Corey Crawford for an extra attacker, and as Crawford skated off the ice, Holmes tweeted again.
“This dude just said f— it and left.”
His social media went ablaze. He began the night with 2,000 followers, and shortly after the Blues’ 3-2 victory, that total had tripled.
“I’m curious who was the first person to say, ‘Oh, this is funny and retweet it,’” Holmes says. “I was like, ‘Where are all these people coming from?’”
One of those new followers was Nikki Marowelli, then a 21-year-old San Jose Sharks fan living in California.
“It blew up on hockey Twitter, and we were all retweeting his tweets,” Marowelli, now 31, says. “When he wrote, ‘The goalie just said f— it and left,’ it sent me through the roof. I was like, ‘This dude is hilarious!’ That’s when I said, ‘OK, I’m following him.’”
What came next was a blur. The tweets led to stories being written about Holmes, an appearance on “Good Morning America,” and, over the 10 years since, have resulted in his meeting an A-list actor and a wrestling superstar.
But even the scriptwriters of Hollywood and the WWE couldn’t match what would come next between Holmes and Marowelli.
Appearing on “Good Morning America” on April 28, 2016, Holmes was interviewed by co-host and former NFLer Michael Strahan. During the segment, Blues legend Brett Hull invited him to attend the team’s next playoff series, against the Dallas Stars.
On May 3, Holmes attended Game 3 between the Blues and Dallas Stars at the Enterprise Center. It was his first hockey game in person.
“I went from a nobody to now I’m having an ESPN camera follow me around,” he says.
The Blues won 6-1, and after the game Holmes was taken down to the locker room, where he met Reaves and other Blues. He met the Blue Crew dancers and took so many pictures that “honestly, my face was hurting from smiling,” he says.
After his Blues’ tweets went viral, Tony Holmes was invited to a playoff game by Hall of Famer Brett Hull. (Photo courtesy of Tony Holmes)
The night was lit, and Holmes was hooked.
The Blues beat the Stars in seven games, and while they would fall to the San Jose Sharks in the next round, he still watched the rest of the NHL playoffs.
“I saw how fun and fast this sport was,” Holmes says. “I was locked in.”
Holmes wouldn’t have to wait the decades that many long-suffering Blues fans did for the franchise’s first Cup. That came in 2019, of course, with a lot of high drama along the way.
One of the most memorable moments came in the Western Conference final against San Jose. In Game 3, the Sharks won 5-4 in overtime on a game-winning goal that was scored after an illegal hand pass that went uncalled by officials. The controversial victory gave them a 2-1 series lead.
“I don’t think I’ve ever been as mad at any sporting event than that hand pass,” he says.
Holmes was irate and went to social media to vent.
On the West Coast, Marowelli was engaged in the series, too, watching her Sharks and tweeting from her account, @_nhlsharks.
The two had followed each other three years earlier but “never really interacted,” she says.
Marowelli saw one of Holmes’ tweets on her timeline — perhaps a retweet from someone else — and clicked on his profile.
“It asked if I wanted to follow him,” Marowelli says. “I was like, ‘Huh, that’s weird.’”
Holmes had “soft-blocked” her account, a maneuver on social media in which someone blocks and then quickly unblocks someone to force an unfollow.
“He soft-blocked me because he didn’t like my tweets about the series!” Marowelli says.
Holmes wouldn’t admit that at first, but does now.
“She knows this. She’s the most boring, obnoxious sports fan ever,” he says. “If you’re a fan of a team that’s playing hers, you’re going to hate her. I couldn’t take it. I didn’t want to be mean, so I was like, ‘Let me get around this.’”
Marowelli reached out, and the two decided to re-follow each other.
The Blues beat the Sharks in six games, and then the Boston Bruins in seven games, which meant Marowelli had to see all of Holmes’ gleeful posts during the Cup run.
“He was so annoying,” she says. “I was like, ‘OK, we get it. The Blues won the Cup.’ I was happy for him but also kind of jealous because, ‘You’re still kind of new here and haven’t really been through a lot.’”
Holmes attended the Cup parade, making eye contact with the Blues’ Robert Thomas and Jordan Binnington. “And they recognized me!” he says.
That was in June 2019. For the next several months, Holmes and Marowelli exchanged casual tweets about the San Francisco Giants, 49ers and Golden State Warriors.
Then, in January 2020, they traded phone numbers. The text messages quickly grew to thousands, and the FaceTiming lasted hours.
“I tell people this all the time: He was my best friend first,” Marowelli says. “My days didn’t feel complete unless I had talked to him. I was realizing more and more how much I wanted to be with him.”
They would’ve made plans to meet in person, but that was the start of the COVID-19 pandemic, so they couldn’t travel.
Finally, in April 2021, five years after following each other on social media and a year after beginning what felt like more than a friendship, they met for the first time.
Marowelli made the four-hour flight from San Jose to St. Louis, where Holmes picked her up at the airport. Instead of welcoming her at the security gate or baggage claim, he purposely waited in the parking lot in his black Mustang with his black Labrador Retriever, Ahsha.
“He knew that I was a huge animal lover and seeing Ahsha and him at the same time would make me instantly comfortable — and it did,” she says. “I just kept looking at him like, ‘Oh my gosh, you’re real!’ We were FaceTiming, so I know he was real, but just being in that car, it was surreal.”
Nikki Marowelli, 31, and Tony Holmes, 36, met online after connecting on social media. (Courtesy of Nikki Marowelli)
“Meeting in person was different,” Holmes says. “It was kind of like meeting again for the first time, but everything flowed so normal just after a few minutes. It was good to have been friends before we started dating.”
Marowelli stayed in St. Louis for a week, and when she returned to San Jose, she cried for two days.
“I missed him so much,” she says. “He was the best part of my life.”
They made plans to see each other once a month, meeting in the middle of their two cities wherever they could.
In January 2022, they attended the NHL’s Winter Classic between the Blues and Minnesota Wild in Minneapolis.
That’s where Holmes met actor Jon Hamm, a noted Blues fan.
“Is that Jon Hamm?” Holmes remembers thinking. “I didn’t say anything, but then he walks up to me and says, ‘Are you f—ing Tony?’ How the hell does Jon Hamm recognize me? We talked for a few minutes, and he said, ‘I see you on social media, and you’re funny!’”
Tony Holmes met actor Jon Hamm at the NHL Winter Classic in 2022. (Courtesy of Tony Holmes)
Then Holmes met wrestler Phillip Jack Brooks, better known as CM Punk. They went on the ice together, and Brooks even made a video to send to Marowelli’s brother, a huge fan.
“He’s one of the biggest wrestlers in the world,” Holmes says. “Of all of the things I’ve gotten to do, I would say that Winter Classic was probably the coolest moment.”
Tony Holmes met Phillip Jack Brooks, a wrestler better known as CM Punk. (Courtesy of Tony Holmes)
But No. 1 on the list, Holmes beams, was “I met my future wife.”
In November 2023, after a year and a half of long-distance dating, Marowelli left her job in education in San Jose and moved to St. Louis.
They stayed in St. Louis for a year and eventually decided to move to San Jose together. Holmes works in computer networking and was able to transfer within his company.
The couple has been in San Jose since September 2024, and hockey remains at the heart of their relationship. They attended six Sharks games this season, including two against the Blues. One game, Holmes was wearing his Vladimir Tarasenko jersey when the team’s mascot, Sharkie, dumped popcorn on him.
“I’m digging the road games,” he said. “I like being a villain.”
Even in enemy territory, Holmes has been stopped by opposing fans.
“I was sitting at a Sharks table, thinking nobody’s going to recognize me, and then, ‘What’s up Tony? You that Blues fan! Can I get a picture?’” he says.
Once, Holmes was even spotted when he wasn’t in Blues’ colors.
“He’s going to kill me for saying this, but he was wearing a Sharks jersey,” Marowelli says. “He was getting food, and somebody walked by and said, ‘Hey it’s Tony X from Twitter!’”
Holmes doesn’t see how that’s possible.
“Especially how long it’s been,” he says. “You’ve been following this journey for a while if you can recognize me 10 years later.”
That it’s been 10 years, and how they connected, still doesn’t seem possible, either.
When Marowelli introduced Holmes to her extended family, they asked how the two met.
“I’m like, ‘How much time do you have for me to tell this story?’” Marowelli says. “The short version is, ‘We met online,’ but then they’re like, ‘Oh, on a dating app?’ I tell them, ‘Well, not really, but Twitter is a dating app if you try hard enough because clearly it worked for us.’”
Holmes recently purchased a ring for Marowelli and is making plans to propose.
“I’ve just got to find the right moment,” he says.
Marowelli is aware of what’s coming — she designed the ring — and knows what her next step will be.
“I’m so excited to plan a hockey-themed wedding,” she says. “Not like a total hockey-themed wedding, but definitely some hockey stuff. I’m going to try to get as much Sharks stuff in there and less Blues stuff as possible.”
Sharkie has already been booked. What about Louie, the Blues’ mascot?
“I don’t know if Louie is going to get on a plane,” Holmes says, laughing.
Asked about potential baby names in the future, Marowelli jokes that she likes Joe, after former San Jose players Joe Pavelski and Joe Thornton. She mentions Macklin, too, after current Sharks star Macklin Celebrini.
“I tweet all the time when Macklin Celebrini does well, ‘Boy or girl, I don’t care, I’m naming my first-born Macklin,’” she says. “Tony’s like, ‘No, you’re not!”
Imagine thinking about any of this 10 years ago.
A woman from California is marrying a man from Missouri because she liked a tweet and then liked him.
“We probably would’ve never crossed paths, but because of the Blues and Blackhawks, I found my soulmate,” Marowelli says. “When he comes home from work, I’m like, ‘I can’t believe I get to spend the rest of my life with you because of hockey Twitter.’”
“I don’t know if you’ve seen the movie ‘The Butterfly Effect,’ but one small thing can literally change everything,” Holmes says. “Those tweets sent my entire life … my life took a left turn and never went the same way again. Just posting some funny remarks, the hockey community changed my life.”