NUPTIALS FOR TONY? WORD IS HE GOT HITCHED TO A FORMER ST. JOE GRAD NAMED ATKINSON

By Juan Montoya
Former U.S. Ambassador and Texas Republican star Tony Garza, who divorced in May 2010 after a five-year marriage to  Maria Asuncion Aramburuzabala, a brewing and television magnate, has reportedly remarried to a woman from Brownsville, Texas, hometown to both.
Although the details of the alleged union have been kept hush-hush, friends of the couple have said privately that they were united in a private ceremony. The bride, Annel or Ammel Atkinson, is said to have three children from a former marriage.
Other reports indicate that both had attended St. Joseph Academy as teens and had met there.
Garza married the 42-year-old Aramburuzabala in 2005, the heiress of the Grupo Modelo brewing empire  which sells Corona beers to the world. She also holds a large stake in the Televisa broadcasting empire and manages an investment firm.
She was said to have a $1.5 billion fortune, and is Mexico's richest woman.
Garza, 52, a lawyer who served as secretary of state and on the Texas Railroad Commission before being appointed ambassador, was a friend and political ally of President Bush. The son of a Brownsville gas station owner, Garza was raised in Brownsville and was equally at ease in his hometown and in Matamoros, across the Rio Grande.
He was also the first Republican county judge in Cameron County since Reconstruction.
After he left the Ambassadorship, Garza established a legal consulting firm in Dallas, Texas. It is unknown whether the couple will live in Brownsville or there.
Tony has always been a good man as long as we can remember him. His first attempt at public office was right here in Cameron County when he decided he was going to run for Cameron County District Attorney and then switched to run for county judge. Ray Ramon – the 1970s Democratic equivalent of Gilberto Hinojosa, but about two feet taller – jumped in the race.
At the time, I was an assistant to a county commissioner who had just beaten Ramon in a grueling runoff election for commissioner of Precinct 1. He and the rest of the all-Democratic county commissioners – except for Pct. 4's Tivie Valencia – did something unprecedented. They endorsed Tony instead of their party's nominee. The county's voters elected Garza, a Republican, over Ramon and would do it again after four years.
Only then were the Brownsville road and bridge precincts able to get a fair piece of the road and bridge budget pie, with Garza casting the third vote for a more even distribution. In time, he courted a majority on the commission that at one time included the current county judge, Carlos Cascos as commissioner for Pct 2.
If the report indeed is true, then we wish him the best with his new family.
We will keep you abreast of the report as more facts are known.