How We Met
It was late April 2015 in Ohio, and my Momma had just passed away after a four year battle with cancer. I was incredibly lost, depressed and needed to find myself, find who I am without my Momma, my best friend. I decided I needed to be alone for awhile, I needed to get the hell outta dodge…so I up and left Ohio and moved to Wyoming to work on a ranch for the Summer. I remember sitting down in the empty lunch room where not all the employees had shown up yet for the summer. I had been sitting there chatting with my friend when this beautiful bearded man walks in and sits down with a full plate of food, and I kid you not I whispered to my friend “that’s the one.”
I preceded to ask him where he was from and with a mouth full of food he decided to simply throw over his hat in hopes of answering my question with that gesture. I took one look at his “Auburn University” hat and slowly stood up as I passed his hat back over and said “clearly this isn’t going to work” as I pointed down to my “University of Alabama” Jersey and all he said as I walked away was “I move all the way across the country to Wyoming and I still can’t get rid of you damn Alabama fans!”…almost two years later and he proposed to an Alabama fan!
how they asked
Take us as the South’s version of Romeo and Juliet, two star crossed lovers, an Auburn Fan and an Alabama Fan. My Whoopa (what I call him) and I love football, but given our love of rivaling teams…we don’t talk about it much (cough ROLL TIDE cough). We normally don’t “shit talk” each other teams out of season, except for one beautiful day out of the year…The Iron Bowl. For non-football fans, this game is when two of the biggest rivalry teams in college football play each other. It was the eve of the Iron Bowl and this year the game was at The University of Alabama, a place my boyfriend wasn’t the fondest of given his Auburn Graduate status. A group of our friends (all die hard Alabama fans) decided to walk through campus to dinner.
We were passing the President’s Mansion and a couple of our friends suggested a photo since I have an obsession with Plantation homes. It kind of gets blurry after this, I remember walking up and someone took my beer for no apparent reason and then I saw that one of my friends (an Alabama fan) was holding my boyfriend’s beer dawned in an Auburn doozie and I remember thinking “something is up, she would never hold that hideous Auburn koozie.” Next thing I know I was getting my photo taken and I saw everyone taking our photo..weird. I turned away towards my friends and all I hear is my Whoopa say “Christina Cartwright Tolley” and I knew immediately what was happening, I couldn’t believe it, I couldn’t even fathom what was happening.
My Auburn Tiger kneeled down on Tuscaloosa Crimson Tide soil and asked me to spend the rest of my life with him and I don’t think I even said yes, I just shakily whispered “can you put it on?”
He had asked my father for my hand just weeks before and since my mother passed two years ago, he thought it appropriate to also ask my Momma’s identical twin sister since I know that’s what my momma would have wanted, and all my aunt said “Well it’s about time!”
So now we’re going to put our rivalries aside and live out the rest of our lives side by side and peacefully with Budweiser in our hands as a house divided…except for the Iron Bowl of course ;)
