So Ronnie told her side of how we met and so now it’s my turn to tell my side of our story. My story starts out in southwest Texas. I had been living and working at the Texas Agricultural Experiment Station in Sonora since 2005. I lived about 30 miles from the nearest towns and both of those towns are pretty small. I was pretty much just living my life kind of be-bopping along. I’d usually go up to my parents home in Mereta on the weekends and see friends. Between my daily travels with work and visiting my parents I didn’t run into too many eligible ladies, but dating was pretty far down on my priorities list. And I’m too shy to talk to anyone if I had met someone during this time anyway. However, one day my Mom (Gwynie Pie) mentioned to me that my aunt Joellen worked with a girl that she thought I would get along well with. I wasn’t too keen on the idea of meeting some girl my aunt wanted to hook me up with. To Joellen’s credit, she had never tried to play matchmaker before, a trait I’m fond of in people. I was picturing a super-lame and way awkward blind date, plus “the girl” (her name was and is Ronnie) lived in Whiteface, TX which is a long ways from where I lived so I’d have to drive like 5 hours to go on this train wreck of a blind date. Truth be known I wasn’t all that repulsed by the idea of meeting this girl, but the shyness/comfort zone factor made it easier to just tell my mom I wasn’t interested and be done with it. But rather than make a decision either way I just left the subject alone for a couple of weeks and then next time I saw my mom she had a few pictures of Ronnie (the girl) that Joellen had emailed her. Of course I looked at them and was very impressed with the pictures Ronnie had selected. Not glamour shots, but pictures of her at work and doing normal people things and she was smiling real big in all of them. I liked that a lot! So maybe another week went by and I didn’t say anything one way or the other to my mom about meeting Ronnie, but I was praying about whether or not I should pursue this. Mind you praying about meeting a girl was not something I normally do, but looking back it made all the difference. I have no idea why I didn’t let God have control of my love life sooner. He is waaaayyyy better at picking out my mate than I ever was at it. In fact every relationship I had prior to meeting Ronnie ended. That ought to say something for my track record of picking my own mates. So anyway, the next time I saw Gwynie Pie I told her I would like to get Ronnie’s email address. Eventually I emailed Ronnie, she replied (which I took as a good sign), and then we emailed a few times back and forth. Then she gave me phone number and I had to muster the guts to call her, which I did thank you. Keep in mind all of this is very much not like me at all. One of the reasons why I know God brought us together is because I never would have agreed to getting Ronnie’s email address or meeting her on my own.
Ronnie and I continued to talk on the phone and get to know one another for a few weeks before we planned to meet in person. We planned to meet in San Angelo and then stay at my parents for the weekend. My thinking was that if the meeting went terribly wrong at least my parents would be there the run interference, they could fill in the gaps of awkward silence if there were any, and if things went bad I wouldn’t be in a strange new place like she would be, and it was kind of the halfway point for both of us. All totally reasonable points I thought. I’m pretty sure I’d have never been as brave as Ronnie was on that first meeting. She had to come to an unfamiliar town, spend a whole weekend with a family of strangers who happen to be the parents of the dude who shes only spoken to on the phone, granted his phone voice is super-sexy, but nonetheless that takes a lot of guts. Way more than I think I have. She says she was nervous but it never showed. We even went out to eat for lunch on Sunday and we ran into a group from church and they unknowingly asked if we were “together.” So this prompted to me to say we indeed were “together” and then we had to tell them all about how this was actually the first time we had ever met which prompted the ladies at the table to tell Ronnie how much of a courageous woman she was, and I couldn’t agree more. And I am so stinking glad I said we were together because I could’ve made a real jackass outta myself if I’d of studdered and stammered around and said “not really” or some other stupid answer. But I didn’t thanks goodness and the whole weekend was perfect. We spent most of that first weekend driving around and talking, or sitting on the back porch drinking coffee and talking, or watching the Olympics with the t.v. muted and talking, or sitting on the couch talking, etc. We talked a lot. Over the next few weeks and months we talked a lot more. I racked up a staggeringly large cell phone bill several months in a row. It was worth every penny! We met face-to-face in August, I went up to meet her mom that following weekend, and then I went back up to Levelland two weekends later and it was on that weekend that we discussed marriage. On my way back home after that weekend, I called my parents and told them they almost gained a daughter-in-law over the weekend because we almost eloped. My dad (Pops) asked why we hadn’t already. I took that as their approval, and Gwynie Pie told me she had already known for some time that we were going to get married (some kind of Mom sixth sense thing I guess). The next time we were together I officially proposed to Veronica on the side of the road at the entrance to some industrial park next to Loop 306 in San Angelo. Not romantic at all, but it was the spot in the road where we happened to pull over to say our goodbyes before Ronnie headed north to Levelland and I could go south to Sonora. The next time you pass the entrance to the San Angelo industrial park you can think of me asking my beautiful bride to marry me there on the side of the road. So I guess now it is romantic!
We were married in December a couple days after Christmas, and then headed to New Mexico for our romantic honeymoon in he mountains. We didn’t get to Ruidoso, NM till close to midnight and then we had to head up the mountain to our cabin. This is the part of the honeymoon where I proceeded to get us stuck in snow/ice at the base of a mountain at 12 midnight in freezing weather. Our cabin was at the top of the mountain! We gathered up our luggage and decided to hike to the top. So we spent the first part of our honeymoon climbing a icy mountain in the wee hours of the morning. Climbing that stupid mountain I thought I was going to be one of those tragic news stories where the groom dies a horrific death on his honeymoon. Luckily, I survived and we had a wonderful time and then headed back to Sonora where we spent the first several weeks of our marriage painting our home. I realize now that painting so early on in the relationship easily could have turned out badly but we worked so well together and never once had the slightest unhappy moment painting and painting and repainting and re-repainting. So now, here we are in our little happy freshly painted home way out in the country away from noise and distractions and we wake up everyday committed to loving each other more than we did the day before.
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