TDN Weekend December 2016 Issue 9
Issue link: https://www.e-digitaleditions.com/i/1087484
D ean and Patti Reeves may be from Georgia, but Sara- toga definitely has their hearts. The couple recently purchased one of the beau- tiful new condos on Union Avenue and plan to have some of their Gulfstream-based string join them for a summer at the Spa in 2019. Patti Reeves greeted me with her trademark warm smile, having just fin- i s h e d up some work for Reeves Media, her Atlanta-based billboard advertising business. We chatted over a glass of champagne as we waited for Dean Reeves, who, of course, lost track of time at the races, as we all know is quite easy to do. It wasn't long before the Georgia Tech alumni came through the door with a big grin and apol- ogies. At over six feet tall with a mili- tary style haircut, some might find Dean Reeves to be an intimidating presence, but spend just a few moments with him and you immediately see that is not the case. It is rare to see Reeves without a smile on his face and both he and his wife always have a kind word or pleasant greeting for anyone they meet. "It was all Patti's doing," Dean Reeves said with a chuckle when asked how he and his wife got into horse racing. "Wait a minute," Patti Reeves exclaimed. It turns out Dean Reeves was not joking, at least not totally. In 2007, while on vaca- tion in Turks and Caicos, an archipelago the couple visits frequently, Patti Reeves met a woman named Esther Ades and they struck up a conversation about Ades's jew- elry. The Reeveses ran into Ades and her husband Bob at a restaurant that evening and invited their new friends out on their boat the next day. It was during that boat ride that Bob Ades and Dean Reeves start- ed talking horses and the rest, as they say, is history. "Bob said, 'I don't have a horse right now, but if you want to, we can go to the Keene- land sale next month and buy one and be partners,'" Dean Reeves recalled. "I said, 'Well, that sounds like fun.' The next time I met him was at the Keeneland sale and we ended up buying a horse named Fearless. That got it started." The duo decided to put in $50,000 apiece to start their new partnership and Reeves initially thought with that amount of money, they would have their pick of horses. How-