After returning from my mission, I wanted to find the person I would spend eternity with. I attended a young adult activity in the mountains near my home. There, I met Kathy Nunnally, a recent BYU graduate. As she said it, a few friends there asked her to introduce them to me, since I was in her ward. She brought them over but never introduced them because she became engaged in our conversation herself. (Her story) A few days later, I saw her teaching at a children’s meeting at Church. She was in her natural element, guiding children. I could not take my eyes off her and knew I wanted to get to know her better. After the meetings, I found her as quickly as I could. We spoke briefly, and I asked her if she would see the movie “Fiddler on the Roof” with me. I didn’t know that she had just seen the movie the two days earlier. But she said, “Yes.” That Friday, when she took my hand during the movie, I knew I wanted it there forever. It seemed like I had known her for a lifetime. She seemed to belong at my side. A few days later, another young adult activity was held at Recreation Park in Long Beach. I didn’t know the name, Recreation Park, so I asked Kathy to ride with me and show me where it was. (Kathy has a different version of this story. She claims this was my plot to get her to ride with me. But, if her version puts her with me in the car, so be it.) We never found the activity; instead, we talked at the beach while sitting in my vehicle. After a few more dates, I proposed to her, though she wasn’t thinking about marriage this early in our relationship. Also, she had been dating another guy who was away for employment training.  She thought about my proposal for a week, then said, “Yes”. I do feel sorry for the guy who was away for work. But then Kathy told me he wasn’t on her list of future husbands because of his view of where to take their lives.

Kathy and I were committed to our faith, and we knew the only place to be married was in the temple of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. There is no “until death do you part” there. We wanted this for us, and we knew this was what the Lord wanted for us. A temple marriage requires a commitment to live the highest standards of our faith, meaning no physical intimacy until after marriage. Kathy was in her first year of teaching in inner city Los Angeles at a challenging school. She couldn’t possibly add the challenges of a new marriage to her other demands, so we decided to wait until the end of the school year, eight months later. The covenants made in the temple have helped carry us through the difficult times that were to come. We were married on my dad’s sixty-sixth birthday, July 14, 1973.