Danielle: This week marks 17 years since Gary and I met through a MySpace group called Primitive Baptist Friends. We met online all thanks to him sharing a meeting announcement, and me deciding to comment on it. Come to find out he had been stalking my profile page, along with all the single Primitive Baptist girls who joined the page, but I wouldn't find that out till much later. He first messaged me on November 5, 2006.
Gary: Stalking? Is that the right term? Someone named Danielle Mallard didn't have a picture of herself posted, so you can't call it stalking when you don't even have a clue what the person looks like. The purpose of the Primitive Baptist Friends group was to post meetings and make friends around the country, because at the time Facebook wasn't a thing outside of colleges. In some ways MySpace was better than Facebook is because you could customize your page and load music and video to it. The bad thing for me though was I was still on dial-up back then.
Danielle: Anyway, apparently I have to take this story back over, since you've said nothing of relevance. Gary posted that Little Union was going to be having Elder Adam Green for their annual meeting in November, and he was inviting anyone to come and visit. I just wrote him back and told him he had been up our way back in June and he'd really enjoy hearing him. That was the beginning
Gary: of the end as we know it!
Danielle: That was the beginning of our nearly daily emails through MySpace for the next two weeks.
Gary: Someone didn't want to show up for our meeting, she thought it was too far to drive. So for the first time in my life I kept notes of the whole meeting.
Danielle: Probably for the last time in your life too.
Gary: So, I keep notes for the whole meeting: Thursday night, Friday morning, Friday night, Saturday morning, Saturday night, and Sunday morning.
Danielle: Am I suppose to be impressed.
Gary: That was alot it was two ministers for every service. We had a very good spirit led weekend. This was the second week in November. We picked up that meeting to fill a hole when the Florida Fellowship Meeting moved from November to February. We loved to have as many meetings as possible. I kept notes to share with Danielle.
Danielle: After a week and a half of messaging each other back and forth I started wondering if I should share my phone number. So I signed off that day's message telling him if he was interested here was my cell number.
Gary: So the next day I called her on her cell phone. It was after I'd gotten off of work so probably 5:30 or so. That started a two week long marathon of phone calls. Many of them were late night conversations that proceeded until the early morning, which wasn't very good for me since I had to be at work by 7 or 7:30 every day.
Danielle: Well they were late night conversations because I had to close up at Wendy's around 2am every night and that's when we had time to talk. After the first weeks of talking it was nearly Thanksgiving and I mentioned a meeting in our area that he might like to come up for that weekend. Turns out I had the wrong date for the meeting, but he was already planning to come up, so he just decided to come and spend the weekend meeting me in person.
Gary: It wasn't just I decided, I'd already been looking at drive time, hotel accommodations, and just getting the basic cost of what it would be to go up from Friday of Thanksgiving through Sunday morning. So I made the comment that "I'm coming up to see you." This I think must have freaked her out.
Danielle: All I could think was what if I had just met an ax murderer online, and he was coming up to meet me. So I told him, he needed to call my father for permission. It wasn't so much to get permission as I needed someone else to screen the potential ax murderer.
Gary: So reluctantly I agreed. I got the number and waited till later in the evening to call her parents. I didn't not know that this would take years off my life, but I got the pleasure of introducing myself, a complete stranger, to another complete stranger in Decatur, Alabama. The only reason that Brother Rick didn't hang up the phone the first second I called, I used the Primitive Baptist endearing phrase of Brother. From there I mentioned that I was having long conversations through email and the phone with his daughter, and that I would like to come up and meet her and them in person. I mentioned that I had found a hotel with good rates, but he told me that I had to stay with them for the weekend, which I was grateful for. After my very painful, long, dry conversation with complete stranger, Brother Rick. I then proceed to hang up and speed dial Danielle, only to have her give me the cold shoulder and not answer the phone.
Danielle: In my defense, I told him to give me time to drive from my apartment in Florence to Decatur to tell Daddy he'd be calling. I walked into the house and dropped my bags in the floor about the time the phone rang. I listened to Daddy's awkward half of the conversation from the top of the stairs. When he hung up he called my name as my phone rang, so I dealt with the person in the room before the person on the phone 700 miles away.
Gary: No excuse. So we discussed our schedule for Thanksgiving weekend. For me it was one of the few weekends off during Strawberry season, so I got up really early on Friday about 4 am, to first hit Bass Pro Shop for Christmas shopping and bought every pair of jeans for $5 that I could find in my size. I then drove all the way up to Decatur, Alabama. The whole way I was arguing with myself, "why did I tell her I was coming up?" Many times I felt like chickening out and turning around, but I had already said I was coming and couldn't. I knew from talking with Danielle that she still had to close Friday evening at Wendy's. Now I wasn't going to drive 10,000 miles to not go see Danielle first, before I met her family. So I drove up to Wendy's and I stopped at the grocery store next door, where I cleaned up from driving all day, I then circled the building to make sure she was there. She was working in the drive through window, and by the time I parked and came inside she had moved to the front register. I then proceeded to order 500 chicken nuggets that I never received.
Danielle: We had to arrange for Gary to order 500 chicken nuggets, because I had no clue what he looked like. The only two pictures on his MySpace were of him, a sister, a cousin, and a friend from 50 yards away on the beach, all in sunglasses. When he ordered 500 chicken nuggets I was a little flustered, he looked older than I thought he was and I was nervous. I quickly arranged to take my supper break and offered to get him something to eat so I wouldn't have to eat alone, but he passed.
Gary: I wasn't going to let you pay for our first meal!
Danielle: Wendy's would have been paying for it not me. My thirty minute lunch break flew by and too soon, I was being summoned back to the kitchen by my manager. I told Gary by and he headed off to my house. I quickly called home, and told them he was on his way, and if they ran him off before I got home that I would kill them all. I can also remember telling one of the girls on the food line, that I had just met the man I was going to marry.
Gary: So after I left Wendy's I slowly drove to Danielle's parent's home. We had a light supper, leftovers from Thanksgiving. After 10:30 I walked upstairs to wait in my room for Danielle to get home. She got home a little while after that, but she didn't come see me she went directly to the shower.
Danielle: Yeah cause I smelled like Wendy's not attractive at all!
Gary: You can talk when it's your turn. So she went directly to the shower. I then made her blush from embarrassment when she got out and we were talking because I listed the four songs she sung in the shower while she got cleaned up. We stayed up late talking Friday night. Saturday being an ag person I woke up early and laid there a while before I heard noise in the rest of the house. We went over to Danielle's grandparents and I found out for my brother that despite everything in the area being named Mallard something that there was no hunting land in the family. Also, side note, if you are going to go up on rival weekend, make sure you watch your team aka Florida Gators beat Florida State. After the whole weekend together, we drove to Georgia together to Captain D's in Atlanta for supper with Danielle's dad following us. When it was time to part ways Sunday evening, Danielle and her father were going to Athens to the University of Georgia then onto the University of North Carolina for grad school interviews, and I was turning south to drive home. We spent two and half days together and I didn't even get a kiss goodbye.
Danielle: It was the first date, and my dad was standing right there.
Gary: About thirty five days later, I asked her to marry me.
Danielle: And that, in our own convoluted way is the story of how we met. That tiny grainy picture is the only photo I have from the weekend, and who knows what happened to the actual photo, we scanned that into the computer years ago. I was 21 and he was 27 at the time. It was a crazy month: about a week and a half of just messaging, a week of phone calls, a weekend visit, and just like that we were a couple. Another month and we were engaged, 6 more months and we were married, and it's lasted all this time.
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