The Beginning.....

Our family began when my good friend Ruth Ann Cadou brought her ‘boyfriend’ to my house to spend race weekend. I remember when she pulled up in my backyard, she drove right over the grass (this was customary race weekend) to park beside my back door. She drove a triumph spitfire convertible and I hated her for it! Her boyfriend got out of the car and carried in snacks and supplies for a great race weekend party. I didn’t notice him really, he was hers and she was not a woman you wanted to fight over a man. We stood in my kitchen and talked and I secretly chuckled over her use of a snobby rich accent when she called him by name, ‘Matthew’. He instructed me to call him Matt and I just shrugged, ‘whatever’. She seemed smitten.

Unfortunately it was my duty to inform them that her dad had begged my mom not to let them sleep together. She started with a loud laugh and grabbed his arm and acted like she was in a soap opera, Matt on the other hand turned 5 shades of white, ‘we’re not together,’ he said quickly and tersely. Ruth Ann kept laughing and holding onto him. ‘Ok,’ I said, ‘whatever,’ and laughed some more, whether with them or at them, I still don’t know.

Ruth Ann’s dad was taking us all to dinner later that night. As I was coming down the stairs from my bedroom after getting ready, Matt was sitting in the living room and he looked up and saw me and his eyes lit up, they just really lit up and he said, ‘are you coming to dinner with us?’, I replied I was and he said, ‘good!’

From that moment on we were inseparable, we were inseparable the entire weekend. Ruth Ann had even hooked me up with a date for the race the next day and I hardly remember him. Race day I sat with Matt and we laughed and watched the race. He fed me potato salad that he had scooped with pretzels instead of chips and called me ‘toots’. (Dumb but true) We flirted and cooed while race cars whizzed in front of us on the track, I am sure Ruth Ann and my ‘date’ were looking on, I just don’t remember. After the race we all went to a local pub and I sat next to my ‘date’, but I was too busy playing footsie with Matt under the table. Matt ordered for me, paid my tab, (I mean what was my date doing all this time, I’ll never know) then Matt and I got up from the table and within half an hour we left them all behind.

We drove around the city laughing in my car, me the crazy passionate city girl, him the guy from an Alaskan town without a stoplight. We never looked back, a bond was cemented, hearts united, we became, were and still are crazy about each other, best friends together…..we were married 6 months later. He says he’s married to a crazy woman….