“My next thought was, Oh, this is a date, because we had been flirting,” she said. “He had also paid for my meal.”
“I dropped my water and made a big mess, but it went really well,” Mr. White said. “We sat outside, she told me that she was still married, which was news to me, but, so, we went into that a little bit. It didn’t scare me at all.”
The two shared their first kiss that night, but it wasn’t until they’d been seeing each other for about a year (during which she was divorced and Mr. White and Ms. Bedell had a brief breakup of their own) that Mr. White found himself reconsidering his attitude toward marriage. He now works for Teknix Solutions, an electronics recycling and telecommunications services business in Manhattan, Kan. She is now in the loan operations department at Community First National Bank, also in Manhattan.
The incident that caused his change of heart involved Ms. Bedell being harassed while she was out on a run by someone in a pickup truck.
“She had a panic attack that night and she was on the bathroom floor crying — my bathroom floor — and somehow the conversation started going toward our future,” he said. “I kind of said then what was creeping into my mind, that she was the one. Even when she was in a terrible moment, I realized how much I cared for her.”
On June 25, at Carnahan Creek Park, the spot in Olsburg, Kan., where Mr. White proposed, the two were married in a ceremony before 75 people that was officiated by Megan Boyce, a friend who was ordained by American Marriage Ministries for the event, with her husband, Brooks Boyce, taking part.