PIKE COUNTY, Mo. — Love is patient, love is kind, love is…a menagerie of often humorous stories that only such a great emotion could produce.
Some tales are timelessly terrific, and Dan and Linda Hutton of Eolia have a doozy.
Their entry was chosen as the winner of the Louisiana Area Historical Museum’s Cupid’s Couples contest. The pair will receive the $300 prize, courtesy of co-sponsors KJFM Radio, The People’s Tribune, The Louisiana Press-Journal and Bowling Green Times.
The contest was open to married residents of Pike County, Mo. They were invited to submit essays on comical events that happened during their courtship, wedding ceremony or honeymoon.
Two museum board members served as judges. Essays were reviewed for whimsical content and amusing value.
“I’m told that picking a winner was a very difficult decision,” said Museum President Brent Engel. “The stories were amazing, and we appreciate all of them. We congratulate the Huttons for their victory.”
Dan and Linda were married on Friday, May 16, 1975.
That same day, a Japanese homemaker became the first woman to get to the top of Mount Everest. The song “He Don’t Love You (Like I Love You)” by Tony Orlando and Dawn was in its third week at the top of the pop charts. And an immortal memory was about to be created.
“We enjoyed a very large reception with over 400 people,” Dan recalled. “The next morning, we left for a weeklong honeymoon in Florida.”
Arriving at their hotel in Tampa, the couple naturally wanted to check out the Gulf of Mexico.
“As we walked toward the ocean, we heard ‘Danny, Danny.’ There in the sand was my mother and sister. Yep, my mother was on my honeymoon.”
Linda was “more mortified than me,” he continued. “I was laughing.”
For Nancy Hutton, the trip South with daughter Barbara was strictly spontaneous. At Dan and Linda’s wedding, she had gotten an envelope from her employer.
Nancy thought it was a gift for the couple. It turned out to be a pink slip and a severance check. Not wanting to dampen the wedding’s festive mood, she didn’t tell Dan and Linda that a classless act was about to be turned into a triumphant victory.
“They decided ‘Let’s blow this off and go to Florida for a week,’” Dan remembered. “They just picked a hotel. It happened to be the one we were staying at. What are the odds of that?”
Well, great minds do think alike. Anyway, Nancy and Barbara didn’t appear again when the couple went to Walt Disney World later in the week. Still, the beach encounter provided amusement long afterward.
“Friends laugh their butts off when they hear the story.” Dan said.
Dan, 70, is a businessman and entrepreneur. Linda, 69, is retired after more than three decades as a nurse. They have three children and six grandchildren. And yes, Cupid still visits their Pike County home.
“I’m married to the most wonderful woman in the world,” Dan said.
Following are a few stories from other submissions:
A love of boating brought together Cindy and Gregg Blaylock of Louisiana, but it didn’t start on the water.
They met in an online chatroom. Senders go by handles. Gregg’s was “Coolwater” Cindy went with “Dragonlady.”
Electronic messages turned to telephone calls and finally “an old-fashioned face to face,” as Cindy described it.
She knew it was love when Gregg offered to accompany her to Home Depot and pick out materials needed for a walk-in closet renovation.
“There was little doubt then when he showed up at my house to install said components that ‘Coolwater’ likely had a place in my future!” Cindy wrote.
The couple was wed on Jan. 1, 2000 – Y2K – supposedly the technological end of mankind. However, the only things “byting” the dust that day were a couple of nicknames.
“Life as we knew it as ‘Coolwater’ and ‘Dragonlady’ ended for sure,” Cindy said.
Sometimes, dude, you gotta beg. And, sometimes, dear, you need to lighten up.
Just ask Glen and Julie Leverenz of Bowling Green. They were skiing in Colorado on Groundhog Day 1984.
As the afternoon wound down, Glen beseeched Julie to make one more run on the slopes. Julie remembers being “cold, tired and less than enthusiastic.” But she “wanted to be a good girlfriend” and “reluctantly agreed.”
All Julie could think about as she whipped down the mountain was thawing out in front of a fire. Already ablaze, Glen suddenly pulled up and plopped down in the snow.
Julie frowned when he prodded her to join him. Then, Glen reached into his pocket and pulled out a gold ring. Stammering because of nervousness – or more likely with teeth chattering due to weather only a reindeer would like – Glen asked Julie to take the mitten from her frozen left hand and proposed.
“Wow! Julie was no longer cold; her heart warmed her entire body and without hesitation she embraced him eagerly and replied joyfully ‘Absolutely.’”
Oh, but wait, dejavu fans. Guess where the couple’s son, Huntley, proposed to his girlfriend in 2022 with “a stunning diamond” that “echoed his father’s brave and beautiful words” of almost 40 years earlier?
You got it, the exact spot. (Insert tears here).
“The mountain-top fairy tale continues,” Julie said.
Talk about falling for someone.
Gene and Leslie Baker of Louisiana caught a break – one that at first did not seem so lucky.
The two had been dating for only a short while when Gene fell on steps at Leslie’s apartment, breaking his right ankle and right wrist. Surgery was required.
“Over the next several weeks, he recovered in my living room,” Leslie recalled. “The usual dating pretenses and good behavior to impress each other came to an end. We realized if we could handle these circumstances and get along, we might be able to meld a happy future together.”
The time allowed the couple to see each other’s strengths and weaknesses, and it made them better for it.
Leslie points with pride that her lack of proclivity for punctuality caused their wedding ceremony to start five minutes late. Also, her two-year-old granddaughter, Ava, escorted her to the altar. Grandsons Wesley and Oliver were ring bearers.
After the ceremony and honeymoon came a move from Connecticut to Missouri, and all the foibles such a trip can entail.
“Since we have survived these challenges, we are pretty sure we can celebrate any adventure that happens next,” Leslie notes. “We are melding a happy future together with love and laughter in Louisiana, Missouri.”
It’s fair to say automobile troubles brought Glen and Joy Wharton together.
First, Glen ran over Joy’s candy bar. Then, a wheel flew off his car.
Joy remembers June 7, 1983, as if it were yesterday. She was in the bathroom of her Louisiana home and heard a brother talking with some guys.
“As I looked outside, I saw my future, my destiny, my soulmate,” Joy said. “His bright, white smile nearly took my breath away.”
Later that day, Joy bought a Snickers at a convenience store and was walking home when Glen pulled up in his car. Joy was so excited that she dropped the candy. Glen promptly ran over it, but quickly made up for the gaffe by asking Joy out.
Before picking up his date the next day, Glen had a flat. He fixed it, but his father asked if he’d tightened the lug nuts sufficiently. Glen swore that he had. Uh, guess again.
As Glen and Joy rolled down Georgia Street in front of Dairy Queen, they saw the car’s right front tire disengage and take its own path. It hit a vehicle driven by another man, who inexplicably got out of his vehicle and chased the prodigal wheel.
“We get the tire and all legalities out of the way and go to see his dad” who “met us as the door and said ‘You didn’t tighten the lug nuts down, did you?’” Joy related.
She believes their “destiny was sealed” that day, if not the parts keeping a certain tire from careening down Louisiana’s main drag.
A first date involving a ride through the tunnel of love at Six Flags is where “the magic started” for Kenny and Lil Peabody.
They still do date nights, but avoid Riverview Cemetery in Louisiana. Coming home from a night out, the two had a flat on nearby Highway 79. It turned out to be “the fastest tire change I had ever seen,” Lil recalled. Kenny “would make a great pit crew for NASCAR.” Or maybe NASCARE?
Anyway, on their wedding night, the couple “did a little too much partying” and spent the night in a “roach motel in Fulton” instead of the classy Osage Beach resort where they had reservations.
“We made it (there) the next day and had a great time,” Lil remembers.
No matter what happens, the show must go on for Jimmy and Debbie Angel.
They dated for seven years and loved going to Bankhead’s Diner or the Bowling Green theater.
“One night, we were watching a rather scary, suspenseful movie,” Debbie recalled. “Just as a heart-pounding scene came on the screen, somebody behind me threw a drink straight up in the air. Soda and a ball of ice landed squarely on my head!”
The culprits were two young boys, who quickly sprinted from the theater,
“As I tried to wipe the soda that was running down my face, my hair got stiffer by the minute,” Debbie recalled. “It may have not been a romantic ending, but nothing could spoil our evening at the show.”
Nor all that came afterward.
Call it an affinity for Three Dog Night or a loathe of liars.
Both helped bring Ron and Judy Allely together. Those two things and encouragement from their daughters.
It may have turned out differently had Judy not “necked” with Ron at a place where, as she described it, “middle aged people came to listen to 70s music and possibly meet someone.”
Wait, it wasn’t exactly “necking.” Here’s Judy to tell the story:
“Some man persisted in giving me his card with all his info, so I hid behind a man with a nice ‘back of the neck,’” she said. “When the lady he was conversing with left for the restroom, I started a conversation with him.”
After two hours, Judy needed to visit the powder room herself, but “I didn’t go ‘cause I knew what could happen.” She ignored her bladder, kept talking and made an admission.
“We found out we were both widowed and couldn’t abide liars, at which point I immediately raised my hand and said ‘I might be a little older than I remembered.’ At the end of the evening, we went our separate ways.”
The two paired up again, got married, opened a bed and breakfast on their Louisiana farm and are living “happily together.”
Chandra and Kasey Roberts of Louisiana got off to a rather smelly start, thanks to beer and Mexican food.
Hold on, girls. Kasey stayed in line. It was Chandra who…um…played the Grim Ripper.
On their first date, the couple enjoyed some salsa and suds. Kasey then drove Chandra around Pike County to show her the sights. Chandra felt the monster in her belly begin to growl. After repeated potty breaks, she could hold back the beast no longer.
“I lost the battle and gave birth to an explosion that I swear to everything was the biggest amount of toxic air that has ever exited my body,” Chandra wrote.
As she got back into Kasey’s truck, Chandra admitted she’d unleashed “a halo of evil.” Kasey acted like it was no big deal, even though his eyes were watering and his nose was turned toward the open driver’s side window.
The couple got married five months later, and every anniversary re-create that first date – sans the stench, of course.
“The best advice I can give ladies who are still in the dating scene is ‘Be yourself,’” Chandra concluded. “Don’t sugarcoat it, don’t mask it, don’t dial it down. Just be your true self, like raw footage. Every woman has curves, every woman has stretch marks and every woman farts!”