When Nadia finally confided in her friend, Alexandru Stefu, that things weren’t as they appeared in her relationship with Panait and that he had control over her life, Stefu decided he had to intervene. So, he got Nadia and Constantin to come to a meeting where she confessed that he was mistreating her, in front of Panait. The next day, Constantin Panait escaped the country with $150,000 of Nadia’s cash and her car.
While he may have stolen her money, she finally won back her freedom, and that was most important. Nadia wrote of Panait “I never heard from him again, but I hope he is well and thank him for his help. I realize that our business relationship may have tarnished my name and image, but I safely escaped from Romania, and that is truly what was most important.”
Concerned Friend
There were several other people who wanted to get in touch with Comăneci as well, including the American boy she once received a kiss from, Bart Conner. He was very surprised to see that Comăneci was expected to appear on the Pat Sajak Show.
Conner knew Sajack’s producer and asked to be a surprise guest on the show. He also told the producer that Comăneci wasn’t in touch with any of her friends in the United States, and he believed something shady was going on. He was determined to get to the bottom of it.
Lost In Translation
It didn’t help Nadia that people thought she was in a relationship with the married Panait. The pair were known to stay in motels and hotels around the country together, and when interviewers asked Nadia about their relationship, Nadia stuck out her tongue and claimed, “It’s a secret.” Nadia later explains her answer as a language miscommunication. The world had no idea that Panait was actually holding the gymnast hostage. She confided in a close friend that Panait held her captive for 3 months.
She wrote in her memoir “Constantin had offered to help me defect, and I'd accepted. I assumed that his wife knew that he was going to help a handful of Romanians get out of the country and that I was one of them. But what people took from my answer was that I was a home-wrecker. Nothing could have been further from the truth. In hindsight, I understand that I'd made a very poor choice of words. Constantin had plans to become my personal manager upon our arrival in the United States. I didn't know that, but he promised to help me get settled, and I guess I just accepted his involvement in my future career as fair payment for the risks he'd taken. People died every day trying to defect.”
Moving around
Fortunately for the close gymnastics community, Stefu offered Nadia to stay with him and his family. Sadly, not long after Nadia moved in, Stefu died tragically in a snorkeling accident and Nadia once again had to find where to go.
Paul Ziert, a friend of Bela Károlyi offered her a place to stay in Norman, Oklahoma. Paul was also the gymnastics coach of Bart Conner. Everything was starting to come full circle.
Rekindled Relationship
After he met her on the Pat Sajak show, Conner gave Comăneci his phone number. Although Comăneci was at first dubious of Conner’s intentions, she figured that Conner was just a nice guy. The two spoke on the phone every once in a while over the next year and a half until finally, Conner invited Comăneci to come to Oklahoma to open up a gymnastics school with him.
They had so much in common as far as their athletic background and the decipline required to be an olympic gymnast. It must have been comforting for Nadia. Maybe she finally met someone she could trust.