Columbia Star

1963        Celebrating 60 Years      2023

Carmella Tronco Martin of Villa Tronco

Star Profile



Carmella Martin Roche (l) and Carmella Tronco Martin

Carmella Martin Roche (l) and Carmella Tronco Martin

On Saturday, October 25, the Order Sons of Italy in America (OSIA) local lodge 2808- Columbia will hold an Italian Festival in downtown Columbia at the Riverfront Park, where there is a bronze statue of Christopher Columbus. Columbia was named for Columbus before any other American city or South American country borrowed the idea.

Carmella Tronco Martin, whose life has been spent running Columbia’s first Italian restaurant, Villa Tronco, plans to be at the center of the Italian Festival with her family.

Carmella Martin was born on the south side of Philadelphia, where her father was in the flooring business. She had two older brothers, Joe and Charlie, and a younger sister, Anna Rose.

When she was five, her father moved the family to Columbia and opened a fruit store at 1901 Main Street. A few years later the family was running another fruit store at 1712 Main Street.

Martin attended grammar school at St. Peter’s on Assembly Street, and she graduated from Ursuline High School, also at St. Peter’s. Ursuline High became Catholic High, which is now Cardinal Newman School located on Forest Drive.

When she was 17, Martin met USC basketball standout Henry Martin. Henry was in the Navy during World War II, and the two got married in 1946.

During the war, Columbia and Fort Jackson were hosts to many young men of Italian heritage who were from Northern neighborhoods rich with authentic Italian food. They missed their neighborhoods, but Martin and her mother Sadie Tronco began to meet the visitors’ culinary callings, and thus Columbia’s first Italian restaurant was under way.

Martin and her husband moved to their house near the corner of Trenholm and Erskine in 1952, across Trenholm from Webb’s Riding Academy, and it is still the Martin home.

The couple has four children.

(1)Son Hank is a doctor who works in the Lexington Family Practice.

(2) Daughter Sara McAlister has three children with her husband, who was a computer consultant in Boston before they moved to Columbia. Another daughter,

(3) Carmella, is married to Joe Roche, and they have two children. Carmella and Joe Roche joined the family business, Villa Tronco Ristorante, in 1972.

(4) Son David was part of the family firm until he branched off to run Tronco’s Catering.

Martin’s favorite memories of downtown include some former icons where Old Columbia shopped and ate and danced: Efird’s, Mimnaugh’s (later Belk’s), Sylvan’s, the Elite, the Market, the Ship Ahoy, Lanier’s, Friendly Cafeteria, Caldwell’s, S&S, Jefferson Hotel, Wade Hampton Hotel, and the Columbia Hotel. And she can’t forget the movies, all in a row along Main Street: Carolina, Ritz, Palmetto (formerly Imperial), and State.

Part of Martin’s fun times at Villa Tronco are the visits by Andy Williams, Mickey Rooney, and Gregory Hines, all memorialized among the other dining celebrities and their signed photographs on the wall by the bar.

Although she has long since relinquished the management responsibilities to the next generation, Martin has carefully kept the operation of Villa Tronco inside her family circle. And the restaurant’s famous cheesecakes are still made by Martin herself.

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