Love story: Pat Partovi and Tom Horne found love together long after high school

I wasn’t planning on going to my 30th high school reunion even though I had grown up with all these kids in our relatively small town. You see, my husband of 25 years was dying of brain cancer, and I didn’t want to leave him home alone. I’d need to be gone for two days, which just seemed impossible. He knew how much I enjoyed these reunions that we had every 10 years, so he arranged to have our son take him to our lake place and our neighbor, who shared the duplex cabin, said she would take good care of them and make all the meals while I was gone.

While at the reunion, I was talking to a classmate, Tom Horne, and discovered that we both lived in Spokane (the reunion was in Carlsbad, California). A few months later, Tom came by the library where I worked and gave me a copy of the Mountaineers’ schedule of activities in case I wanted to get out of the house now that my husband had passed away. I went ahead and signed up for a local hike, and Tom suggested that we meet for breakfast beforehand so that I could follow him to the trailhead.

Over time and many hikes and bike rides, we really hit it off and were married. That was nearly 26 years ago, and we are still going strong. Another interesting tidbit is that at about the same time my first husband and I were moving to Spokane, he found out that he had a son by an old girlfriend who she had never told him about. The young man, Matt, lived on the East Coast, but he and my husband talked on the phone regularly. They never did get to meet before he died, but Matt came to visit about a year later, and he and my son, Dave, clicked immediately and have been close brothers ever since.

For me, it has always felt like divine intervention. Even though the lord needed to take my husband and my son’s father from us, he sent Tom to me and Matt to Dave to make up for it.

And, by the way, Tom’s birthday is on Valentine’s Day.