I don't remember what day it was, but I clearly remember the details of when I met my future wife.
It was early 1983, second semester sophomore year at Drake University; I was an intern in the Capitol bureau of KWWL-TV in Waterloo, Iowa. I'm not sure how I became an intern. While I had worked in radio more than 4 years, I had no experience as a reporter and hadn't taken a class in TV news reporting.
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| Rhonda and me at her Senior Prom. May 1983 ----------------------------- |
The Iowa Legislature was in session for 100 days, so if they were in session, I was at the capitol. One day I was standing in the press gallery when a page approached me. Her name was Rhonda and her badge indicated she was from Center Point. After a brief conversation she invited me to the "Page's Ball."
I wasn't dating anyone at the time and thought it might be fun to go to the dance, so I said yes. Then, thinking it would be more fun if it weren't our first date, asked her to come to church with me and then out for a snack at Swenson's Ice Cream Parlor. (It may not sound great, but there was a second date.)
Her parents were at the Ball, which was a fundraising event for some charity (I don't remember which), so I got to meet them as well as dance with my date.
We got along very well and continued dating, including a weekend when I drove from Des Moines to Center Point to attend her Senior Prom.
It was a long-distance relationship over the summer when she worked in New York City and attended a conference in Washington, D.C. She enrolled at Central College in August, which was closer to Des Moines than Center Point.
It was somewhere between the Page's Ball and mid-summer that I knew she was the one.
She went home with me that Christmas. On Christmas Eve, in front of a roaring fire I asked her to marry me after my sister and parents had gone "to bed" mysteriously early for the holiday.
Rhonda said, "Yes."
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