Mario Gabelli, for those of you not familiar with Wall Street, is the country’s leading telecommunications investor. The Gabelli Fund has over $12 billion under management. Presidents of countries and financial potentates use all sorts of stratagems to secure a meeting with this most powerful individual.

We were therefore thrilled when Mr. Gabelli agreed to visit our office. In our industry this is vaguely akin to a visit from G-d. Not that I felt we should act differently or put on special airs in deference to the visit. If Mario liked us the way we were, great. If not, then he was not the right partner for us.

On the day of the great man’s visit, therefore, all our people were wearing jeans as usual. The ramshackle used desk and chairs were as tightly crowded together as usual. And the general chaotic frenzy of our office was undiminished.

I did, however, make one concession to this great man’s visit. I ordered in a couple of pastrami sandwiches in case he was expecting lunch.

As we were eating our sandwiches and talking, Mr. Gabelli told me how impressed and refreshed he was by our no-nonsense approach.

“Where do you come from?” he asked me.

Rather than putting on airs and telling him I graduated from Harvard, I told him where I was really from. “The Bronx,” I said.

“No kidding,” he said. “I knew it. I’m from the Bronx too. We Bronx boys aren’t impressed by all that corporate bullshit.” Amazed, I asked him where in the Bronx he was from. “You wouldn’t know the area,” he told me. “It was called Bathgate Avenue.”

“Bathgate Avenue,” I responded. “I used to help my grandmother buy fruits and vegetables from the Italian sidewalk vendors on Bathgate Avenue.”

“No shit,” he said. “I used to help my uncle run one of those stands.”

A real friendship was born that day.