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Mom and Dad, how did you both meet? Can you describe your wedding day? Well, I'm going to let Jeff say how we met because he has a stronger case for it.

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It's a bit of a story. So freshman year, 1971 in the fall. At Boulder, CU.

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We both had biology 101 with Dr. J. Windell and it was held in the Flatirons Theater. Can you imagine a biology class in a movie theater?

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Yeah, so I don't know how many 500 kids in that class were. Yeah, it was huge.

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It was big. You didn't have to pay attention.

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It just turned out that I would see Debbie in the class. A goat figure.

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And she was a tall redhead and one of my friends and Houghton's sister had the exact same color hair, glasses and the same hairstyle.

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So that immediately kind of caught my eye. And then I was with the guy.

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I didn't notice him. That was worked in the dishroom because I worked in the dishroom with David Frederick, David Claiborne, this guy Rick Shear, where we faded away, but those two other guys, still good friends.

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Anyway, so let's see your mom. And so a lot of times we'd have to walk away across campus because Shear worked in Kittridge and I worked in Kittridge.

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So we had to walk all the way across campus and your mom was living, I guess, in Bakers. I was in Libby.

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Libby. The basement of Libby.

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So, but we'd walk past the bookstore and down around past geology and all that and then she'd break off. So I just walked by.

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He followed me. Kind of stalker, but, you know, she's tall and pretty, but she didn't live where I lived.

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And so it was kind of weird, but I kind of knew this face, you know, among others. And then Christmas, well, at second semester, she moved in with a friend who lived in Kittridge.

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So all of a sudden I showed up. All of a sudden she shows up.

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The dining hall at Kittridge. Yeah.

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So that was like, oh, hello. So then the Dishroom food service people, this was like our own combination sorority fraternity.

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And they historically had what was called a greaser party, sort of a fifties party where everybody dressed up like the fifties. And it was in our net that we kind of did this in the crossover lounge and people's some other guys rooms.

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So we were up there and we're pretty hammered as parties in college were. And Debbie's friend, her roommate shows up.

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But, you know, when you work in the food service, you see all these same kids all the time. And you kind of know who goes with who, where they live, you know, basically if they live in that dorm or some other dorm.

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So anyway, this Christy girl, she seemed to take a shine to me right off the bat. And so we get to talking and I said, oh, don't you live with that red-haired girl?

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Oh, yeah, she lives with this red-haired girl. So then I'm going to stop you there a minute.

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Christy, her name is Christy Stambaugh and I knew her since high school. We were good friends through high school.

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And so I dated her big brother. Yeah, I knew he was the same size as I was, but I dated him one summer.

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And so we knew each other and my roommate situation in Libby was terrible. So her roommate moved home and I moved in with her.

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So that's how I got to get out. So we got to Buckingham.

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Yep. Got to Buckingham.

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So I don't know that then that was the very night we went to IHOP. No, we did all that after skiing, Jeff.

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Skiing was hers. No, skiing wasn't skiing.

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So subsequently. At some point.

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Yeah, very soon after that we went skiing together. And the same guy and Christy and Debbie and I went in his Volkswagen bug.

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And so yeah, we went to Breckenridge and he was a better skier than me. I was with him.

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Christy was with Jeff. Yeah, more or less, but that didn't last very long because.

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Skiing abilities. She was really good and he was good.

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And so your mom wasn't very good, but and I was better. So we would.

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That's true. It's absolutely a fact.

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Anyway, we would we skied most of the day together. And now we have a chairlift from the same chair called the crescendo chair that we skied on that that very first day.

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Yeah, first sort of date. Basically.

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So then we came home. Yep.

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Christy ended up sitting up front seat with Rick and I was in the back seat with Jeff. We went to Giuseppes on the hill had a Ruben.

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Some beers. And then at some point later on, we were out again and we were at I hop.

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Well, we walked around the hill, but no, another date and that one turned kind of ugly and sad at my hop.

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But basically that it got us together and sad. How does it get ugly and sad?

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Christy ran out of the restaurant. She was really upset because you were paying attention to me and not her.

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And so it was really sad. So she ran out.

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I probably wasn't sad. And the other part that got your dad more connected to me as I had a guinea pig.

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I think it was a gerbil, but it was a guinea pig. And the guinea pigs like to eat lettuce.

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So I would always find lettuce at my doorstep of the dorm because your dad working in food service would bring that.

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So that's kind of the story of how it all happened. I hopped came.

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Maybe it did. I don't know.

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But yeah, you would remember more than I did on that. So yeah, that was kind of the story.

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Yeah, that was a traumatic for her. But anyway, so that's how we met.

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Now the wedding day. So we got married June 19th, the Saturday, 1976.

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I had been in Boulder working. I graduated in '75, stayed in Boulder for a year, worked at Boulder Electric Motor Company.

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We got engaged about three months before we got married, which was great consternation to my mom and dad.

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Spring of '76, like February. I think we already talked about that.

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My mom basically planned everything. She was just a gem.

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And my dad was very, very gracious since I was the only daughter. But that day, it was beautiful Saturday.

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I remember sitting out on my front yard. Maybe I already said this, but sitting out there just relaxing in the sun and the mailman came up.

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Back then, all the presents were mailed to you and displayed on your table with a little card of who gave them to you. And I remember the mailman saying to me, "Aren't you getting married today?" And I said, "Yes." And he goes, "Well, aren't you nervous?

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Why are you sitting out here?" I was like, "I wasn't nervous or anything at all." Just very relaxed.

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You know, you didn't go, at least I didn't go and have my hair done or my makeup done or any of the nails done. I probably painted my own fingernails even if I did that.

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Yeah, you didn't do any big bridesmaids things. No, nothing.

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My bridesmaids, my buddies, we did not do a whole lot of stuff. No, it was just day of.

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And it was an afternoon wedding. It was one o'clock at First United Methodist Church on 7th of Colorado. The church is still there.

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And it was a big ceremony, 200 plus, maybe 250 people. And then we went downtown to the top of the Rockies building.

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My dad knew since my dad worked downtown and was very involved in business life in Denver. In the shrine.

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Yeah, he knew someone who owned that. So it was a gorgeous...

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It was the petroleum club. Yeah, it was a big kind of a buffet, finger food.

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Unfortunately, we had this. This is where your dad really hated the part of our wedding. We had a receiving line.

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And that's kind of what you did. The bride and groom, the parents of both families stood up and you greeted everybody.

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You can imagine how long that takes if there's 250 people there. So that was a tedious part of our wedding.

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It was. And they had waiters pouring champagne. And they had waiters with trays besides the buffet.

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They had trays with snow crab claws. It was a beautiful buffet. I mean, it was spectacular.

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It's like four top floor views of Denver out of all. It was a really two-sided anyway, east and west.

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So it was not a band. There was no dancing. I mean, you know, early afternoon we leave in your little green fiat.

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And we came down to cars springs. After we cut the cake, we just barely had time to eat the cake.

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And then you changed clothes. Yep. And came down to cars springs.

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Where's the party? Spent our first night at the antlers.

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Went over to Michelle's. Had ice cream.

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Where'd we get to drink? Nothing. We had to drive.

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So that was our, do you want to add anything else? Well, then we went to Michelle's, which as the kids know this Debbie had been going to Michelle's when she was a kid in Denver.

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And when my parents moved here in fall of '71, my family started going to Michelle's. So Michelle's was a hallmark in both our lives.

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So of course, you know, when we got married, we had to go to Michelle's. My dad knew people down here. So we got a pretty nice place at the antlers.

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And then we left and went to... The Tamron in Pagosa Springs.

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Yeah, in Durango. And it wasn't Pagosa, it was Durango first, remember? And we found out that it was a very expensive place that you could, the cost was just for the room and everything was really expensive.

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But we did the narrow gauge railroad. But so Jeff's mom had a relative that owned the Pagosa Springs resort.

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So they graciously got us out of the Tamron and into their place. And we stayed there. Stayed in their guest. We did Mason's Verde.

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We had a really great time there. We did their train ride. We had a lot of fun. So it wasn't like, you know, the wedding, all that's not like things are today where you have these huge honeymoons and big blowouts.

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Yeah, it was the last little honeymoon that we could afford. Yeah, yeah. And then...

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It was great. It was our style. We had a few showers. I remember one...

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Several, like five. I only remember going to two.

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Well, generally you don't go to all of the... I know. It was the days of the women had a lot of showers.

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Yeah. And I just remember going to some function at my parents' house.

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Probably wasn't a shower, it was like a dinner. I remember going to like Hugh and what's her name?

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Valor's house? Surely in Hugh Valor.

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Was it their house or was it Bruns's? It was the Bruns's house.

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It was Bruns's. So anyway, went to a couple showers. Yeah.

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Yeah, and then we got married. And by this time I had been admitted to veterinary college.

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And we... When we moved down here, we stayed down here for three months beforehand.

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And Debbie Burwick was, you know, the near Burwick's with neighbors of Grammy and Granddad. And she is a school teacher and worked in the summers in Canyon City for the magician down there.

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So she had a little apartment, the red brick apartments right across from Stratton Elementary School. And so she just let us stay there for free while she was in Canyon City.

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And then as the summer went on, we looked to buy a house and we bought our house at 4,280 Dream Lane is our first house. So that was...

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Yeah. And while, oh, and in between that, after Debbie came home, we stayed with Jeff's mom and dad for a little bit.

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And we were kind of hankering for a dog. And we saw this ad in the newspaper.

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That's how you did it. And it was for a little red lab puppy.

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And it was over off of Crystal Park Road in Manitou. And so we went over there one night.

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We didn't tell Jeff's parents and we fell in love with these puppies. Just loved them to death.

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So we... Mom was golden.

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Dad was... I think it was $50.

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A big lab. We put the money down and we said, well, we can't take them home until we move because Jeff's mom, dad had already had their golden.

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And we just didn't want them to have to have the puppy. But we didn't tell them we had done this.

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And somehow... Until we came home, I think.

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Somehow we... It came out.

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Because we would go over there more than once. Yeah, we'd go visit.

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And so when they heard that we had this puppy, they said, well, you have to bring it home. So that's how we got Boone.

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And he came home and lived with Ann and Will while we lived there for... It was about two weeks in their basement.

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Yeah, a while. But he liked it was good because they had this dog Rufus that we got through Debbie's friend.

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And he had this friend in Kittridge that first sprung the one in the summer. Yeah, we talked about that already.

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So Rufus was good at training Boone and we had a great time. And they had the cabin by then.

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Oh, I should add one other cool thing. So Jeff's going to vet school...

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He's going to work now down here. Oh, no, that was vet school.

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That's right. So we were going to vet school and I needed a job because I needed to help pay.

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I needed to pay for vet school for him. And that's summer while we're living at Debbie Burwick's apartment.

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Pay everybody off. He...

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Ann and Will, right after we got married, they went on a little educational class up at Rocky Mountain National Park. And in the class was the soon to be head of the Fort Collins Hewlett Packard.

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It hadn't been, you know, it hadn't even opened yet. And he was in Ann and Will's class.

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And so they told them that their son and daughter in law were moving up there. And he said, "Well, here, reach out and here's the name to reach out to because we're hiring." And so we got home, I reached out and the rest was history.

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I got the job and that's how I started it. So you were kind of in accounting or something?

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Started out as accounts payable. Was there for John Knudsen?

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He was the last... He was the guy that had red hair and he combed it like this.

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Poor guy and it got in a windstorm and a blue. But he was the nicest, greatest boss.

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I remember saying to him, you know, when I was interviewing, I said, "You know, I'm only going to be here three years because you're in vet school." And he goes, "You won't be in this job that long.

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You're going to be moving here." And sure enough, in six months, they moved me to a buyer.

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So it was just... Then you moved to Loveland for a couple of years.

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I was back and forth between Loveland and Fort Collins and jobs. So all while paying for...

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We didn't borrow any money, do anything to get you through vet school. I think we did a little in the beginning, but then we paid it off.

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We didn't borrow any. No. Because I'd worked through, you know, at first year out of college.

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So I saved. And I'd frame in the summer.

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Wedding ring, the diamond, was from Al Moore. He was a jeweler's shriner that my dad knew.

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Yep. Yep, my younger dad knew.

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So that's a long answer to that question. Bit of history.

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Yep. Now we're going on 50 years of marriage.

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Okay.