Love In Real Life Readers Share Stories Of How They Met Their Special Someones

Spokane’s Jeannie Henderson met her special someone 10 years ago while sitting in a 747 delayed at SeaTac airport while a security crew combed the plane for a bomb.

“Fortunately none was found,” she wrote. “We had a great trip to Europe and we are still together.”

Becky Grigsby met her future husband in the back seat of a car. “We were making a beer run,” she explained. “We dated three years and have now been married for 16 great years.”

Ah, you can’t beat real-life love stories - especially with Valentine’s Day around the corner. So The Slice asked readers to share the tales of how they met their spouses or significant others. And more than 70 answered the call. Thanks to all.

We don’t have room to tell every story. But here are some of our favorites.

“There he was, standing on the corner of Post and Sprague in Spokane,” wrote Lou Carver. “I had seen him around in high school in Kalispell, Mont., six years earlier. So I pulled my red 1964 VW bug over and yelled, `Hey Boe, get in.’ He did!”

Davenport’s Sharon Buck met her future husband, Gary, after her preschool daughter invited him over for dinner.

Gail Barlow’s husband-to-be was driving a flashy new convertible when he picked her up on the corner of Sprague and Wall. They will celebrate their 40th wedding anniversary in June.

Newport’s Beryl Pielli wrote: “Butterball, the family poodle, chewed my leather shoes to teach me a lesson for not allowing her to come with us on an all-day trip. When I took the shredded shoes to a local shoe repair store, I met Leonard, the funniest man alive. The dog is dead, our six kids are grown and established, we will celebrate our twenty-first wedding anniversary in May, and we are still laughing!” Moscow, Idaho’s Joseph Sivula was working in Seattle and wearing a Cayman Islands T-shirt when he first bumped into the woman he would marry. She poked his chest with a pointing finger and said “I almost went there.”

Conrad Harder of Colfax met his bride-to-be outside a San Jose, Calif., nightclub while in the midst of a mobile bachelor party for a guy who was, by that time, way too ill to go inside.

The first time he saw her, at Riverfront Park, Tim Lowry pointed at wife-to-be Bonny and yelled “Hey, Mom, that’s what I want for Christmas.”

LaDawn Heywood wrote: “We were sitting next to each other in a restaurant in Deer Park. I reached across in front of him and accidentally pushed a full cup of coffee off in his lap.”

Dave Brooks met his future wife, Rena, on Dec. 24, 1968, while he was working as a police officer in Priest River, Idaho. It seems she and another young woman had been behaving in a suspicious manner near the town Christmas tree. So Brooks questioned her. “We were married eight months later,” he said.

Patricia and Eric Erickson found romance by the bagfull. They first got to know one another at Dick’s Drive-In.

Cheney’s Carroll Devin met her future husband in a college choir.

Rob and Christie Diebold met through e-mail. He went by “Lightning.” She called herself “Feather.”

Darlene Ruhling met Gerry Ruhling 41 years ago this spring when she went into a corner grocery to help her mother shop for Easter dinner. “The meatcutter on duty suggested a nice ham,” she wrote. “I got the biggest `ham’ of all.”

Sally Cooper wrote: “As a teenager, my mother told me not to cruise Riverside because all I would find is trouble. She was right. `Trouble’ and I just celebrated our twelfth wedding anniversary last month.”

“I set a trap for him at Havermale Junior High,” wrote June Eagle, referring to husband Don. “I finally managed a date with him at North Central. We were married as seniors, and will celebrate our 60th anniversary in a couple of weeks.”

Moscow’s Jane Rubero wrote: “My husband is from Texas, I am Australian. We met in high school in Canada.”

Newman Lake’s Penny Johnson wrote: “I was walking down the hall my first day of high school trying to look as cool as possible when I was shoved from behind and told `Get out of my way you little sophomore.’ Nine years and three kids later he’s still trying to push me around and I’m still trying to look as cool as possible.”

Toni Taylor was playing pool at a bar when her special someone “Came over and head-butted me (forehead to forehead) before even being introduced!”

She added, “Needless to say, Dale knocked me senseless and I am still with the Cro-Magnon almost five years later!”

Thomas Conrow wrote: “A little over 52 years ago, a young infantry sergeant was having a ho-hum time at a dance. Suddenly, the most beautiful girl in the world cut in on him.”

Ron and Olga Mill met in 1990 when he was working at Eastern Washington University and she was an exchange student from Russia.

Rawly Anderson met his bride-to-be when both were working at a Spokane nursing home.

Hayden Lake’s Linda Steele wrote: “My spouse and I attended the same high school together. After two dates during our sophomore year, we just weren’t sparking (he wasn’t much of a kisser) … Twenty years later, I flew over 2,000 miles to our 20 Year Class Reunion, and there he was. We just recently celebrated our first month of blissful marriage (and yes, kissing is a favorite pastime now).”

Donna White of Palouse recalled the first meeting with her husband, Don. “We both took an immediate dislike to each other.”

That passed.

Elsie Jarvis remembers how her husband of 62 years, Fletcher, stood with her on a porch and told her about the stars and the moon not long after they had met at a birthday party.

Kris Bennett wrote: “I met my husband on top of a mountain while snowmobiling. He was with his fiance. I remember thinking what a cute couple they made.”

Kimberly Taasevigen wrote: “My significant other and I met at my then boyfriend’s house during a party.”

Asotin’s Stephen and Suzy Cowdrey met through a personal ad in the Ruralite magazine. He caught her eye by describing himself as having a “Far Side sense of humor.”

Ritzville’s Jimmy Werner won a coin-toss with a buddy and got to be the first to try striking up a conversation with a “well endowed” girl they had scoped out at a park. He must have said the right things. She has been his wife for 24 years now.

Grangeville, Idaho’s Anne Long wrote: “I met my husband of 27 years at church, where we were introduced by my first husband, who died two years later in a plane crash.”

Dale and Anita Maxwell first got acquainted while he was a carousel operator at Natatorium Park. He gave her a free ride. Their 50th anniversary is this month.

Davenport’s Paul Kembel was a hospital patient in Ephrata in 1945 when he met his wife-to-be, a nurse.

Sherm Blake met his special someone on a golf course. At the fourth tee, to be exact.

Nanci and Robert Cram met during a ping-pong game in freshmen physical education class 10 years ago at Ferris High. They still debate the matter of who won.

Sharon DeBauw remembers meeting husband-to-be Jack in 1955. “I looked at him, he looked at me and I knew this was my partner for life,” she wrote.

Kathleen and George Perks met in Ellensburg while both were visiting from out of town on Mother’s Day, 1968. He was in college, she was in high school.

As she tells it, she was an innocent bystander observing a neighborhood water fight when George picked her up and dumped her in a puddle. “But while he had me in his arms, I did notice how big and strong he was, and quite good-looking,” she wrote.

Stephanie Harper wrote: “I met my husband at an outdoor high school assembly, 20 years ago in 1975. He was sitting five bleachers above me and nailed me with a water balloon. I should have been furious, but he has such gorgeous blue eyes. He asked me to the high school dance that night and I couldn’t resist. We danced to `Stairway to Heaven,’ and the rest is history.”

Gary and Flossie Burrill met on a blind date in Ohio, in 1960. They went to a county fair. “Gary stood up two other girls to take me,” she wrote.

Gaye and Kim Davis met at Deaconess Medical Center in 1985. She was a patient undergoing heavyduty heart tests. He worked there. “I helped wheel her back to her room,” he wrote.

From Mik and Kim Cole: “We met at the Wildlife (restaurant in Grand Coulee). We did the wild thing, and now we live on Wilding (Street) in Spokane.”

Sheena Emery remembers that when she met her future husband, “We actually exchanged phone numbers in a dark alley.”

Marlys Heston fell for a bus driver named John - “Who wasn’t potbellied and old like the other drivers” - in San Francisco 28 years ago.

Diane Thain wrote: “I played clarinet in high school during my junior year (at Mead High). One day, a new student (transferred from Riverside High School) walked into the band room to join the band and play trumpet. Right then and there, I thought, that’s the guy for me.”

Sue Hicks met the man in her life 32 years ago in a dance hall on the Flathead Indian Reservation in Montana.

Don Ott Jr. wrote: “My wife Laura and I met as college seniors in a class called `Biological Basis of Behavior.’ We were conducting sex experiments on rats and were lab partners.”

Ione’s Lidie Hamilton met her husband of 44 years, Bill, at a dance for servicemen 46 years ago. She remembers that he was “A tall, skinny sailor.”

Dorothy Munson wrote: “The date is June, 1968, Viking Tavern, 1:55 a.m. This fellow (never met him) takes a case of beer off my lap. We end up at the same after-hours party. Twenty-seven years and two boys later, I still mention once in a while what an expensive case of beer that turned out to be.”

Betty Belnap was hitchhiking outside of Albuquerque in 1953 when the man she would marry a week later picked her up and gave her a ride.

Another reader, who asked that her name not be printed, wrote: “I was the maid of honor at his first wedding.”

Becky Moser met her husband at a kite-flying contest at Franklin Park.

Bonners Ferry’s Nancy Affleck wrote: “My future husband waited tables at a fancy pizza parlor where my date took me. While my date was in the men’s room, the waiter, after having cleared another table, headed toward me. He tripped, spilling a full glass of milk at and on my feet! While apologizing and on his hands and knees cleaning up, he asked me my name and phone number - just before my date returned. There was no crying over THAT spilt milk!”

In 1945, Merle Ann Leytze met her husband-to-be, a Navy friend of her brother’s, through the mail. “I wrote, he answered - need I say more,” she said. “We wrote back and forth for almost a year, never seeing each other except for pictures. We fell in love through our letters.”

They were married in 1946. He died in 1993, after years of suffering from Alzheimer’s disease. “He started and ended our lives together not knowing who I was,” she said.

But that doesn’t block out her memories of how they began. She keeps her first picture of him in her billfold. “He doesn’t have a shirt on and he looks just like Paul Newman,” said Leytze. “He was really something.”