Trina Edwards and John Alario are moving to Gretna | Entertainment/Life

Trina Edwards Alario has a definite sense of style. 

And she’s taking that style to her husband’s beloved Gretna, on the West Bank of the Mississippi River, just east and across the river from uptown New Orleans.

Since she married John Alario on June 1, 2023, the couple has, until recently, maintained two homes — the one Trina had in Baton Rouge and Alario’s longtime home in Westwego where he’s lived for nearly six decades. (He and his first wife built it for $19,000 in 1966.) This month, they sold Edwards’ Baton Rouge University Club home and plan to eventually sell Alario’s longtime Westwego home.

A 99-year-old house on historic Huey P. Long Avenue in Gretna set the couple’s real estate domino effect in motion. They both say they knew it would take a special place, meeting a lot of requirements, for them to consolidate their lives into one home. 

Putting it into the universe

“I’m a Baton Rouge girl,” Trina said. “But when John showed me Huey P. Long Avenue in Gretna, I thought, ‘I could live here.'”

The problem was that the homes of Gretna’s Historic District are loaded with curb appeal and rarely come on the market — a reality that did not deter Trina.

Once she decided that was where she wanted to go, when people asked, she would simply say, “Oh, we’re moving to Huey P. Long Avenue.”

If they asked, “Which house?”

She would reply, “I don’t know yet.”

Trina isn’t shy about putting into the universe what she wants. She’s a girl who knows a lot about dreaming big.

In April 2024, she got exactly what she wanted — the perfect house on Huey P. Long in Gretna. Though she wouldn’t describe the path toward its renovations as “dreamy,” the home is coming together, after much ado and with a dedicated design team.

After months of meetings with the Gretna Historical Society for approvals, they’re making progress.

A rule follower

In the last few weeks (since photos for this story were taken), the outside of the Alario’s new home has been painted — with a historical society-approved color, of course. The walls have been finished on the inside and some have been painted. 

“Other than that, it’s going slow as hell,” Trina said Monday. 

The Alarios are working with Flynn Designs in River Ridge to redecorate the home, which was originally built in 1926. They have gutted and re-imagined it, keeping its architectural integrity and abiding by all rules and historical society recommendations.

Trina describes her husband as a rule follower.

“I married one rule breaker and one rule follower,” she quips, referencing her previous husband, Edwin Edwards, who died in 2021 at 93 years old. Edwin Edwards served four terms as Louisiana’s governor — along with an eight-year stint in federal prison after he was found guilty of racketeering charges.

Edwin Edwards and John Alario were close friends and longtime political allies in Louisiana government. Alario served 48 years in the Louisiana Legislature, both as president of the Senate and Speaker of the House. 

These days, he’s playing a different role, by Trina’s side, making decisions about a different house.

As the couple reviews plans for Alario’s writing desk, they look at a photograph of the chair they will use, adding that the room will also include his chair from when he was president of the state senate. 

“I had to buy from the state,” Alario said, adding that it cost about $1,300.

Designing a new home

The Alarios invited me to join them for one of their regularly scheduled meetings with Kristine Flynn, owner and designer at Flynn Designs, and designer Jennifer Cheatham, followed by a visit to their work-in-progress Gretna home. 

Before the meeting at the designers’ office, they had arranged for five test wood stains on the Gretna home’s recently sanded floors, awaiting Edwards and Alario to choose the winner. 

“Oh, this what I wanted to tell you,” Flynn said. “The floors are not white oak. They’re red oak — that’s why it keeps pulling the red.”

The wood-stain choice was only one of the decisions to review.

Alongside pages of oversized architectural plans, five large acrylic trays — each representing a different room and filled with samples and swatches of tiles, fabrics, decorative trims for curtains, carpets, paint colors, molding and wood stains — crowded the meeting table.

The tray dedicated to Jan Alario’s room got a lot of attention as everyone in the room is highly considerate of what John’s 57-year-old daughter, who is developmentally disabled, wants her room to be. 

Jan Alario will have her own space downstairs, as will Trina’s 11-year-old son with Edwin Edwards, Eli Edwards. 

“She doesn’t want sconces,” Trina said. “She says that those are too hard to work. She wants desk lamps.”

Desk lamps it is.

“I thought the process was gonna be more difficult for Jan, but really, she’s been very decisive,” Trina said.

Jan Alario has charmed the design team, as has her father, who, throughout the process, has been his usual diplomatic self.  

The designers agree that the Alarios have similar tastes, with few style differences. 

“But every now and then, he’s the tiebreaker,” Flynn said.