On the eve of my wedding day, one worry nagged me.
Steve and I came from different backgrounds—I was a city girl from Scottsdale, Arizona. He was born in Oklahoma and grew up in Kansas.
My dad was a trucker, his was a minister—but the boy who bothered me in freshman biology class at McPherson College in Kansas quickly won my heart. He proposed senior year, and we decided to marry at the college church two days after graduation.
My parents and Steve’s would drive in to celebrate. Living so far from one another, our parents had never met. And my parents weren’t that outgoing. Would they get along?
At the rehearsal dinner, I saw Steve’s parents looking curiously at my dad. “Don’t worry, Lana, they just think he looks familiar,” Steve said, trying to put me at ease. I hope that’s a good thing…
The ceremony and reception went beautifully, and afterward we headed to Steve’s parents’ house for a family dinner. I was anxious to get there, but first we had to stop to wash our car.
Steve’s friends had mischievously written “Just Married” on it with white shoe polish. “I’m sure our parents are getting on fine without us,” Steve told me. But the butterflies in my stomach wouldn’t stop.
When we finally pulled up, I was relieved to see our dads happily walking together in the yard.
“We figured out how we know each other,” Steve’s dad said.
Twenty years ago Dad was driving long haul when a snowstorm forced him to detour through Oklahoma. “It was Sunday morning, so I pulled my big rig over and stopped at a church for services,” Dad said. “Afterward, the minister and his wife invited me home for a meal.”
“That was us!” Steve’s dad chimed in.
Later, I told Mom how amazed I was by Dad and Steve’s fateful meeting all those years before.
“There’s more,” Mom said. “Your dad met a lot of people on his routes, but I definitely remember him talking about that couple. He was so impressed by them. He thought it was funny our kids were about the same age…And he told me one more thing.”
“What was that?” I asked.
“He said he’d be proud if one of our kids married into a family like theirs.”
