Here's the Story of a Lovely Lady...

Approximately a billion of you have been pestering...errr...asking me to tell the story of how Priscilla and I met. (Yes, that means you, Kristin.) So, in the interest of full disclosure and extreme self-indulgence, I shall now reveal to you the tale...

As most of you no doubt realized, prior to the last few months, I was quite the confirmed bachelor. I had the posters on the wall, the grooming of a retired county fair pony, and an apartment that was such a mess that you had to wipe your feet prior to going outside. I did have my streak of girl-craziness (shut up, Roxie) though, and a few of you bore witness to the horrors that were my dating life. (For those of you who don't know, think Fatal Attraction, but with a medicated Glenn Close.)

Anyway, in February of 2006, I got out of a four year stint in the Marines... no, wait, that would have been more pleasant. It was actually a four year relationship, which involved something that might have been an engagement, but then again, it might've just been indigestion. Either way, it gave me a rotten feeling in the pit of my stomach. So after struggling with it mightily, I gave it away in February of 2006, and then proceeded to live The Single Life. I almost had Nicole Richie move in with me, such a single life it was. (Paris wouldn't have made it here. The rats would've thrown her out in disdain.)

Of course there were the requisite flings, one date wonders, and I did manage to get shot down more than a Vietnamese person in a Rambo movie, but for the most part I was single, free-wheeling, and loving it.

However, a single heart eventually turns into a lonely one, and my thoughts turned toward the future. Unfortunately (or fortunately, in retrospect) most of the women that I would've allowed myself to commit to were busy committing to other things, like missionary trips to Budapest or basically anything that consisted of life minus me. Which is great for them, but which pretty well sucked for me at the time.

So I did the unthinkable. I signed up and actually paid for a singles website.

Now, normally my disdain for singles sites would be closely akin to my disliking of passing live ammunition through my rectal orifice, but desperate times called for desperate measures. Not that I was desperate mind you, but I... oh well, okay, MAYBE. I signed on in shame, assuring my friends that I really wasn't serious about it, but secretly hoping that somewhere, somehow, Rebecca Romijn was somehow on this site and looking for a 30-year-old, out-of-shape, tired disc jock for a long term relationship.

Of course the first few months were full of more duds than the fall TV lineup. And let me tell you, there are literally HOURS of entertainment to be had from browsing the profiles and pictures of people who are, and I am trying to be sensitive and compassionate here, uglier than horse turd maggots. There are people on there that you would swear were PhotoShopped that way, because it does not seem possible for one human being to possess that many nefarious qualities in their face alone. Still, there were cute ones, and I managed a couple of dates out of them, but yet I was left feeling like a used Coca-Cola bottle on the side of the road: empty and alone.

My three month subscription was up, and not much had happened. I did have sort of a relationship with this one girl who was nice, cute, and completely psychotic. But as I sat in front of the computer on my last day of my subscription, there was still this voice picking at the back of my brain, saying "give it one more chance."

Always listen to that voice.

I renewed my subscription, went on the chat, and there she was. Flirting with everybody. Eventually, through subterfuge and deceit and not a little blackmail, I outlasted all the other guys in the chat and got her alone. We met again the next night, and then a third night for our first "chat date." I realize that this sounds completely nerd-ish, but there was something right about her that I couldn't put my finger on.

Chats turned into phone calls. I fell in love with her voice the first moment I heard it. I felt like honey was dripping through the phone. I feared that bees might somehow burst down my door and sting me scoldingly for using their honeycomb as a communication device. And the more I talked to her, the more I liked her.

And then...she dropped the "come see me" bomb. Crisis! Panic! She lived a good ten hour drive away. Could I see myself driving completely across the country just to meet this girl I had been talking to for mere weeks on the off chance that we might click on a personal level face-to-face? I balked at first, and then she called me on it. I kept hearing that annoyingly correct voice again telling me to get off my butt and be adventurous.

It was insane right from the start. I had no clue who this girl was, nor what her family did. And then, on top of that, I was picking up her sister's boyfriend on the way up, and I had no clue who HE was. He'd never met them before either. You couldn't have come up with a more volatile recipe if you combined Emeril with a firing squad. This was either going to be really really bad or really really good.

As it turned out, the sister's boyfriend was a really nice guy, her family was really nice, and I was smitten with her from the first moment I laid eyes on her.

One moment as I apply the brakes to the story... For as much as I was immediately stricken with love, she was not so immediately enamored. I say this with as much self-esteem as is humanly possible, but I do have this physical condition that my roommate has technically diagnosed as Being Uglier Than a Butt Wart. Still, even though she was resistant at first, she eventually melted to my charms, and before the second night was through, we had our first kiss. It was actually her first one altogether, which is nice for me, though I honestly can't remember who my first kiss was with, nor when it was, probably because it wasn't all that terribly magnificent.

I left her after New Years' Day, completely in love. Not more than a few days after that, she told me she loved me. And not many days after that, she blurted out a marriage proposal over the phone. She claims she doesn't remember that, but I swear to you, it is seared in my brain like pedophilia is seared into Michael Jackson's. Not being content to let her steal my thunder, I proposed to her via the Idol Waves show for the world to hear, and she said yes.

The second time I saw her, it was to give her a diamond ring. The third time I saw her was to bring her here to Memphis. Honestly, it was supposed to only be a week-long visit. We were planning to get married in May of this year. But when the time came, I couldn't take her back, and she didn't want to go. We called our families, got their blessings, and we got married.

And there you have it. As Paul Harvey says, "the rest of the story." Any screenwriters out there who want to make us millionaires by writing a script about it, let us know.

P.S. Since it was sort of impromptu wedding, there aren't many pictures, and those that exist are of us in street clothes, so don't expect any fancy schmancy tuxedos and bridal gowns!