Meet Matthew “Marcello” Haynes

We recently connected with Matthew “Marcello” Haynes and have shared our conversation below.

Matthew “Marcello”, so many exciting things to discuss, we can’t wait. Thanks for joining us and we appreciate you sharing your wisdom with our readers. So, maybe we can start by discussing optimism and where your optimism comes from?

I have always been a firm believer in going where I was led, and all of the important turning points in my life have happened because I was willing to do so. Some may call it the Universe, the Source, or faith in God, but I will give you these instances where doing so was the right thing to do. First, I became a gondolier when I was 20 years old and just finished my junior year of college. I had joined the crew team that year at school, but was specifically looking for warehouse work for the summer, which I had done the previous summer after sophomore year. I went to the first temp agency on my list, but she didn’t have anything well-paying enough for me to make the money I needed to go back to school (each year my parents would tell me I needed to make X amount in order to be able to afford Lehigh for another year). In our conversation, though, I happened to mention crew, and she said, “Crew means rowing, doesn’t it?” I told her that it did indeed, and she said she was at a job fair at Providence College a few weeks earlier and there was a company looking for gondoliers. I said this was my dream job, sign me up! However, this wasn’t a listing of hers, so we were looking through the yellow pages together trying to find a gondola company (didn’t find one), and this was so long ago that there wasn’t internet on her computer (I have been a gondolier for a LONG time!) I told her, though, that I would find the number, and I went home and called Providence City Hall, got bounced around through a number of departments until I was put through to our (at the time) very Italian mayor’s office. They had been instrumental in my old bosses starting the company two years earlier, so they knew the number immediately. I called and the voice on the other side said, “You’re hired! You can come down and start training tomorrow.” I got there the next day and it was my boss and I and two boats, and the gondolier he had trained the previous year hadn’t worked out, so that second one was going to sit until I was ready. I have loved it since the first time I set foot on a gondola, and have been rowing for 26 years as of 2025. I trained for about a month, rowing my first trip on the 4th of July, and along the way, my bosses (a husband and wife ran the show for ten seasons, me rowing for them the last eight) asked how I heard about the job, because they didn’t advertise or anything. I told them about the woman at the temp agency who had been to the job fair at PC, and the two of them gave me blank expressions and said they had never been to a job fair. This was the only gondola company in New England at the time, so I have no idea how that woman actually heard about the job, but I tell people it was a little bit of blind luck and divine intervention.

I became a teacher after college, so I was still able to row each summer, and I worked for my bosses for eight summers before I bought the company from them in May 0f 2007. However, in September of 2006 I got my dream teaching position, taking over for my own physics teacher at my alma mater high school, Ponaganset in the northwest of Rhode Island. I had been laid off from my position at Johnston (a couple of towns over, and where I was living at the time) teaching biology and general science, but my graduating class had its ten-year reunion over the summer. I was telling my tale of woe to our class advisors, both of whom I had had as a student in high school, and they told me to come and at least substitute at Ponaganset – all of the positions had been filled, but at least I would work every day. I subbed for a few weeks at the beginning of the year, then one day the science department chair (who I had also had as a student) stopped me in the hall and asked how I felt about teaching physics for a while. I told her I was thinking of going back to school for physics anyway (I was a history and biology major in college, but physics was my one true love in academia – still don’t know why I didn’t study it in undergrad), but asked what was up with Mrs. Oexner, who I had had for physics myself for two years in high school and had taught there for 35 or so years. Mrs. Bailey said that Mrs. Oexner was going out for surgery, and would I like to cover for her for 9-10 weeks, into the second quarter? I said I would love to do so – when do I start? She said, “Monday.” It was Thursday. So on Friday they had me shadow Mrs. Oexner instead of substitute teach, and I sat in the back and observed all of her classes that day – we probably took the exact same quiz that I remembered taking myself ten years earlier, and at one point I asked her to borrow a physics textbook so I could read up on some subjects over the weekend. She took the top book off the pile, gave it to me, and it was MY textbook from when I was a student! They were brand-new my year, and there was my name, right on the first line – I couldn’t believe it. Her free period was the last period of the day, and we set up the whole quarter together, and in a little foreshadowing, discussed what subjects to cover if she was delayed in returning. At the end of the day, she gave me a hug and said she was so happy that I was the one who came along to cover for her while she was away, and we never saw her alive again. Mrs. Oexner passed away eight days after surgery, an amazing woman and teacher, and it was my honor to cover for her while she was away. I taught for four school years at Ponaganset including that one, but realized pretty quickly in the second one that it was much harder being a small business owner and a teacher than it had been being an employee and a teacher. My position got cut in half after four years, and rather than picking up biology or history classes and taking someone else’s job, I decided to take it as my sign to try to make it just as a gondolier, which I have been doing since retiring from teaching in 2010.

Finally, my wife and I have a great love story – we have only been married since 2012, but met in 1988 when her family moved to my hometown of Foster while we were in fifth grade. We were good friends through middle school, but she did home schooling for 9th-11th grades and we lost touch as a result. She came to our high school for 12th grade, wanting the high school experience for one year at least, and I definitely had a thing for her, but didn’t say anything – it wouldn’t have worked out then anyway, as she was much more of a rebel than I was back then and beyond! Our paths crossed a time or two in the intervening years, seeing each other at the 5-year reunion and 10-year, but we were always in other relationships. Then in 2011 we reconnected on her birthday thanks to Facebook – I would never friend my former students on Facebook until after they graduated, but would try to go on each day to wish a happy birthday to whoever had one that day, just to get the once-a-year update. It was her birthday in early March, and I sent her a message saying I hoped she was well and saying I would love to get together. She wrote back, and we got together for a cup of tea first, then lunch, then dinner, then more dinners, then we got engaged, moved in together, got married, and the rest is history! However, at our wedding, one of our mutual friends, who both of us had known since 5th grade too (me even earlier) brought not only our 5th grade class picture, but also our 8th and 12th grade yearbooks, and notes that we had each written to that friend in middle school about each other. So we found out on our wedding day that we had crushes on each other 20 years earlier and didn’t know anything about it!

I have other stories like this too, including how we started our satellite gondolier company in Naples, Florida, which operates roughly opposite to our operation in Providence, Rhode Island. Feel free to let me know if you want that story too, but how could I NOT be optimistic given stories like these!? And these don’t even get into having two incredible parents and a terrific brother on top of it all – suffice it to say, I fall asleep every night thankful for the life I am blessed to live.

Thanks, so before we move on maybe you can share a bit more about yourself?

I actually do a number of things – primarily I operate two companies giving trips on authentic Venetian gondolas in Providence, RI, and Naples, FL, as well as being half owner of a kayak rental business with two locations (though hopefully will be moving away from that in the years ahead to focus on other projects), half owner (with my wife) of a small commercial farm on our property growing fresh produce and herbs, and the proud co-founder (again with my wife) of a small nonprofit community foundation. Much more importantly, I am the husband of an amazing, powerful, intelligent, beautiful, and otherwise all-around incredible person and dad to three absolutely awesome kids – regardless of what else I might do in my life, for me, the greatest accomplishment of it is being a dad.

So basically at La Gondola, we give trips on our Venetian gondolas along the beautiful Providence Riverwalk in Rhode Island’s capital city, as well as along the picturesque Gordon River, Rock Creek, and Naples Bay in Naples, the jewel of Southwest Florida. With each trip we provide ice bucket, glasses, and opener (BYOB), handmade Italian wine cookies, and of course a little singing from the gondolier, with whom a party can interact as much or as little as they like. The big thing to drum home, especially to newer or younger gondoliers, is that there is no cookie-cutter experience here. I like to tell people on the boat as an example that the family of five from Iowa on their whirlwind tour of New England get a very different trip in the afternoon as the couple from Riverside with the 2-, 5-, and 7-year-old at home, who haven’t had a date night in about six years. Sometimes we can spend the entire trip talking about history, landmarks, Venice and gondolas, other attractions or restaurants to try, etc., and sometimes we just need to shut up and row, but hopefully everyone disembarks feeling like they had the trip that was perfect for them, just maybe not quite perfect for everyone.

For me, singing is the best part of being a gondolier – I have had a song in my head for as long as I can remember, and have been singing in churches for 25+ years too. I think on a Providence trip, two songs is too few, four is too many, three is just right (four in Naples, as the trips are a bit longer), and I love rowing a trip, singing usually two songs from a standard repertoire, but having my third one being specifically for that trip, based upon something I learned about them either ahead of time or during the trip itself. This could be as simple as Happy Birthday in Italian or an anniversary song (we do a lot of special occasions), but also a song with someone’s name in it, one from their home state or city, or just one that has a theme to do with our conversation.

When it comes to anything new, what I would really love to do is finish two albums that were very nearly done when the Covid-19 pandemic hit and I never actually finished them. The first is called Sleepy Songs For Little Dreamers, and it is all the songs that I used to sing to my friends’ kids to get them to sleep when we all got together and which I also sang to our own kids once we had them. It is just me singing without accompaniment, but instead of being completely a cappella we added “sleepy sounds,” which we always played to get our kids to sleep while I sang to them – fire crackling, rain falling, etc. The other is the first gondola album, a collection of all of my favorites, mostly me singing solos, but others involved as well both accompanying on instruments, instrument solos, and lending their voices too. The second gondola album (yet to start production) would be all of the active gondoliers of Providence singing their best songs – the first two I can definitely finish one day, but we will see about the third. I would REALLY like to finally finish and record something that would check off a bucket list item in my life, writing and recording an original song. This would be a song about Venice in Italian, and I have the chorus down, just need to translate and write the verses. We shall see …

I love the foundation, and would like to do more with it if I (and my wife too) can find the time. The LGP (La Gondola Providence) Community Foundation’s mission is to help support the food, shelter, and belonging needs of Providence County’s most vulnerable residents. Not citizens, mind you, residents – we don’t turn away anyone who asks for help as long as we have funds in the account, but it is basically funded by proceeds from our various businesses, and some years that means we have more in there than others. We created the nonprofit because La Gondola (in both locations) gets requests for donations of gift certificates for fundraisers well over a hundred times a year, but there wasn’t any other nonprofit about which we felt so strongly as to donate money to it, so we created our own. It functions as a stopgap, basically – we know there are nonprofits and the government that can help people on a much longer-term basis than we can, but sometimes the wheels in those machines turn rather slowly, and in the meantime, rent needs to be paid, food and clothes need to be purchased, etc. So we try to fill that immediate need, sometimes helping out with a month’s rent or a security deposit, but especially we buy a lot of grocery store gift cards, so someone can at least try to keep food on their table, as well as help stock the local food pantry each month.

A lot of how I approach parenting and domestic partnership is influenced by being a gondolier for so long. Having spent over 25 years making memories with people, I find that at least part of the wealth equation really must be quality time, and the way we use it with those we love most. There is a dream too of writing a book one day outlining this and other lessons learned rowing a gondola, but again, we will see about that too.

There is so much advice out there about all the different skills and qualities folks need to develop in order to succeed in today’s highly competitive environment and often it can feel overwhelming. So, if we had to break it down to just the three that matter most, which three skills or qualities would you focus on?

To me, productive (and often creative) problem solving is an essential skill for any small business owner. Once upon a time, situations business-related would cause me a fair amount of stress because I hadn’t encountered anything like them, having taken exactly one business-related course in my college career (Econ 001 – fascinating class, but only moderately helpful in the day-to-day operation of a gondola operation). However, I have definitely gotten to a point almost twenty years into running this company that I have seen most problems through to a successful conclusion, and can call upon a vast array of memories of problems solved and also skills related to solving them that become more useful every year.

Second, mindful communication is nearly as essential when it comes to just about any interaction, be it with clients, employees, other business owners, but also my wife and children – being mindful of the personality, mood, mindset, etc. of the person with whom one is interacting is so important to having a (hopefully) positive interaction with them.

When I was in immunology in college, I remember my professor saying that for him, the study of immunology was a fascinating one for two reasons – “The excitement is in the concept, the beauty is in the details.” That phrase has stayed with me for over 25 years now as a great example of the importance both of the overarching theme or plan, but also the minutiae. For really any subject, it is the synchronizing of the macro and the micro that makes for success, and joy in creating it.

When it comes to someone early in their journey, I would say that your best path forward is through mindfulness in all things. This will allow you to recognize what big things to prioritize, but remember that joy can come from little wins too, and recognize that growth is nearly always incremental, so it is good to be able to look back over time to see how far you have come to this point, and that you are always (hopefully) going to be striving forward, even if sometimes you have to take a step back.

Who has been most helpful in helping you overcome challenges or build and develop the essential skills, qualities or knowledge you needed to be successful?

Without a doubt, it has been my relationship with my wife since 2011 that has helped me to build and develop the essential skills, etc., in order to be successful. She is also a small business owner, and it is absolutely invaluable to be partnered with someone who has also been on her own, so to speak, for even longer than I have, counting independent contracting and other projects of hers. She is incredibly hardworking, intelligent, and creative, and a great model for our children as well (two girls and a boy) for someone who can be a loving and caring mom and a successful businessperson too.

However, I don’t want to say that everyone has to have a domestic partner to be successful in business or life. That said, it is, I feel, nevertheless the quality of our relationships that most easily creates a pathway for success and contentment in life and work, be they with a romantic partner and other family relationships, business partners or associates, valuable employees (I don’t really like that term – I would much rather use team members), and personal friendships.

Contact Info:

• Website: https://gondolari.com
• Instagram: @lagondolaprov

Image Credits

Nicholas Millard
John Simonetti
Marianne Lee