Once I took hold of his hand, it was like everybody just melts away like in the movies where the couple just swirls up into the air and I’m hearing, “I love you and I want to marry you.” - Becky
What were your dating lives like before joining The Right One?
Becky: How does “nil” sound?
Steve: I’d had just one or two dates. I hadn’t been widowed too long at the time.
When you did meet, how many others had you been referred to through The Right One?
Becky: Steve was my first referral.
Steve: She would have been my third name or the second date; one, we just talked on the phone and didn’t decide to meet.
Becky, what was your opinion of Internet dating sites before you signed up with The Right One?
Becky: I thought a lot of the guys on there were just after somebody who is a size 8 and looks better than they do. I hadn’t had good success with them at all.
What inspired you to try a matchmaking service?
Becky: It was interesting because I knew I wouldn’t find somebody online, but I thought, "I’m going to check this group out, what the heck, what do I have to lose? I want to find out about this and see if it’s any good." I went online and gave my phone number and they called me, and after that there was no more online and I liked that. I liked the personal touch.
Steve: They cold-called me; mine was just a phone call asking if I was single and that was my reference. I had no point of reference prior to that. I was open.
What did you particularly like about the interview process?
Becky: The person I met with was very personable and willing to share and made me feel very comfortable. I was apprehensive when I first went in, but after I talked to her for a while the apprehension left and I could communicate my thoughts, desires and needs.
Steve: They were sensitive; they were asking me several questions about the timing of my wife’s death, rather than just trying to get me to sign up for something to get the money. I was impressed with the testing and the interview part. I was just interested to see what it was because of what they said. I was open and I wasn’t not going to sign up, but I sure hadn’t thought about doing it that much prior to the phone call and interview. They wanted to make sure I was ready before we even started filling out the papers. I wasn’t interested in the bars and local scene, that wasn’t where I was coming from.
Becky: I think I can echo what Steve says, and they were very thorough. Before they let me do anything and before they even told me what the cost was or anything like that, we talked about how long it had been since Brad had died and how I was feeling about getting back into the dating scene.
Steve, what inspired you to contact Becky?
Steve: Just whatever information they had there just appealed to me right off the bat. I just had a personal gut feeling about it more than what was actually in there, because there wasn’t that much information.
Steve, what did you do for your first date?
Steve: We went to Red Lobster and had lunch.
Becky, what was your first impression of Steve?
Becky: I thought he was a good-looking guy. I just thought it might be nice to talk to him.
Steve, what was your first impression of Becky?
Steve: I thought she was attractive, neat, and I don’t know how they matched us that well, but she was what I was looking for. I just felt good from the very beginning of this relationship. It just looked like really where I needed to go.
Becky, what do your friends and family think about how the two of you met?
Becky: If they ask us how we met, we tell them and they say, “Oh, interesting!” I never got a negative reaction. I was clear with people that we didn’t meet blindly. There was sufficient testing and checking; it wasn’t just someone saying they were something that they weren’t. I make sure people understand that. I was not interested in somebody trying to convince me they were something. I knew somebody else checked things out and the interview part was the most valuable part of this whole thing for me, and the background checks.
What was the proposal like?
Becky: We had dated a while and I decided we were just too much alike and we would never make it. So in May I informed him of that, and I was very good at getting my point across. He was almost ready to hang everything up but he had promised to be my friend, so he wasn’t going to quite let me get out of his life.
Our church has an annual conference once a year and they were doing a memorial service; they do a memorial service every year for the pastors and spouses who have died. I told Steve as his friend I would be there, because I remember what it was like when they did Brad’s service, because my husband had also been a pastor. Steve had gone back three times looking for me and the dinner I was at had gone over time so I was a little late, but I wasn’t late for the service.
I sat with him and his mom. I thought that when they were doing this service for Brad, it would have been nice for somebody to hold my hand. Without thinking that we hadn’t had more than just a polite hug between the two of us - we’d talked a lot but there hadn’t been much physical contact - I just grabbed hold of his hand. That was it. Once I took hold of his hand, I don’t know what the guy was saying that was speaking, it was like everybody just melts away like in the movies where the couple just swirls up into the air and I’m hearing, “I love you and I want to marry you.” And I’m looking around trying to figure out who is talking.
Steve: Our first lunch was nearly four hours, not just a five-minute “in and out.” She just inspired me to get more done. She was someone who lit my fire to get going. We agreed we would stay friends because I knew I had made a friend for life from the beginning; we have so many similarities. The matching was perfect in that sense, though a lot of the things that are similar in our lives weren’t on the test or in the questionnaire.
I had taken my mom with me that day and I just knew right there that that was it. I just felt comfortable with that. I just knew we were going to get married from that minute on. We both knew that and we just felt it together.
I never considered trying to meet somebody over the Internet. That wasn’t an option for me. But the way this was done was a very complete way and a very comfortable way. I tell people the similarities in our life: Emotional situations, loss of spouses, and loss of children. In our ceremony at the wedding, we acknowledged, we had pictures of both our husband and wife and our two children. Becky wrote a special part for that and the pastor read that and we shared the flowers with the family members that were there from the loved ones that had passed on.
We’re able to deal with that on the same emotional basis. It’s a strengthening thing and not a weakening thing for us. We didn’t replace that person, but we didn’t die with that person when they died. God gave us life to continue on. That was good and that allowed us to continue. And the more we find out about each other, how much more it is just what it’s supposed to be.
You two were married last summer?
Steve: We got married six weeks from that date.
Becky: That was June 7th that we fell in love, and we were married July 12th.
Wow! When did you actually meet?
Becky: February 4th.
What is your life like now? How do you like to spend time together?
Becky: We started going to the parks and walking around and watching nature and spending time like that, which was real meaningful for both of us. We continue to have a date night every week and because we have other commitments, we have to be apart some. We have more than one residence right now, so that’s a challenge but we’re able to work through that. We’re both very busy when we’re apart so the time doesn’t go slowly. We only talk to each other four or five times a day!
Steve: We also cruised to Alaska with our family for our honeymoon in August.
Becky: It was wonderful.
Do you have any advice for people who are considering joining The Right One?
Becky: One of the ladies in my church, she’s been widowed a couple of years and I referred her. I told her about Steven and I, and I think that when she heard a success story she was more inclined to do something like that. So I think I would just say try it, you never know what you’re going to find or where you’re going to find a person. If you don’t go through a reputable service like The Right One or you just go online, check them out, Google them, do a person’s report or something. It’s worth the money you pay.
Steve: For me, the other thing about the process here was that we were both ready to move on in our life and we were looking to have someone special in our life. You’ll see somebody who might be attractive to you for whatever reason or someone you meet in an organization similar to yours, but that person may or may not be at that point in life that they’re ready. They were checking with us for that beforehand and then we were put together with someone where we didn’t have to go through the part of, “Well, I don’t know if I want to date yet or have a relationship yet,” that kind of thing. That was very refreshing and good. I think that was a real plus in the program.
Any closing comments?
Becky: It’s been great, and our friends and family have embraced both of us and that has been a good thing. It was fast, but it felt like forever between the time we fell in love and got married. After I came to the point where I decided that I would like to get married again, I said, “I don’t want to mess around with dating and everything, I just want to find somebody and know that’s it and get married,” and that’s what I did.
The Right One saves a lot of heartache and a lot of pain.
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