By the time Pam and I stood together on the Golden Gate Bridge, life had already taught both of us some difficult lessons. We knew that lasting love isn't built on fantasy. It's built on faith, gratitude, forgiveness, and the decision to keep choosing one another every day. Some love stories begin in youth. Others begin after life has tested you.
Ours began on July 26, 2017.
When I first met Pam, I didn’t know that the woman standing in front of me at Pinstripes would one day become my wife. What I did know was that there was something beautiful about her, inside and out. She had an amazing smile. She was warm. She was genuine. She was easy to be with.
There was also something about the way I felt when I was with her. I wasn't trying to impress her or searching for the next clever thing to say. Conversation came easily, and so did the laughter. I found myself wanting the evening to last a little longer, and when it ended, I knew I wanted to see her again. At that point I couldn't have explained exactly what was beginning between us. I only knew that being with Pam felt unusually natural, as though the two of us had somehow skipped over some of the awkwardness that usually comes with getting to know someone new.
At a stage in life when both of us had already lived full chapters — raising children, building careers, walking through joy and hardship — we weren’t looking for fairy tales. We were hoping to fall in love again. To feel that spark, that closeness, that deep sense of choosing and being chosen. We wanted something real, yes — but also something tender, joyful, and alive. And that’s exactly what we found in each other.
Over the months that followed, what I felt for Pam grew in ways that were both exciting and reassuring. I loved being with her when we were doing something special, but I also discovered that I loved being with her when we weren't doing much of anything. We could travel and explore and laugh our way through an adventure, but we could also sit across from each other over dinner and talk for hours, or curl up together on the couch watching a football game, comfortable in the kind of closeness that was becoming increasingly natural between us. I began missing her when she wasn't there and instinctively saving things I wanted to tell her until we were together again. Somewhere along the way, Pam stopped being simply the woman I was dating. She became the person I wanted to share things with first.
On Sunday, November 18, 2018, I asked Pam to marry me in California. But the moment itself had been building for weeks. Before the trip, I had quietly asked her parents, Roger and Marlene, for their blessing. They were happy — genuinely happy — that this was happening. That meant everything to me.
I wasn't asking because I believed Pam needed anyone's permission to marry me. She was a strong, independent woman who had built a life of her own. I asked because Roger and Marlene mattered to her, and therefore they mattered to me. I wanted them to know that my intentions toward their daughter were serious and permanent. I wanted them to understand that I wasn't simply asking Pam to share the good years with me. I was asking to become her partner in whatever years God gave us—the joyful ones, the difficult ones, and all the ordinary ones in between.
When they gave me their blessing, I felt something beyond relief. I felt welcomed. Somewhere in that conversation, I stopped feeling only like the man dating their daughter and began imagining myself as part of their family.
When you marry later in life, you don’t just join two people; you join histories, families, and generations. Their support mattered. Roger and Marlene had built their family on faith, encouragement, and the simple practice of always showing up. I respected them deeply, and receiving their blessing felt like being welcomed into something larger than a marriage.
Now I needed the perfect moment. And I had the ring. For weeks, I carried it around, waiting.
We were on vacation in California for ten days that November, visiting a friend in Petaluma, Jake and Talia in San Jose, and later driving to Los Angeles to celebrate Thanksgiving with Chuck and Terry and their family. That Sunday morning, Pam and I had breakfast in Sausalito. It was foggy, the kind of San Francisco morning where the landscape seems to appear and disappear in front of you. Later we drove over to one side of the Golden Gate Bridge, parked the car, and started walking.
As we moved farther out onto the bridge, the world seemed to open around us.
The massive red-orange towers rose overhead while the suspension cables swept down toward the roadway in enormous, graceful arcs. Far below, the water of the bay stretched away from us, dark blue and gray in places, silver where the light caught it. Sausalito and the hills seemed to settle into the distance behind us. San Francisco appeared across the water through the haze, its buildings softened by the atmosphere. Boats looked impossibly small from where we stood, leaving thin white trails behind them.
Then there was the Pacific beyond the bridge — immense and seemingly endless. The wind came at us hard enough that you knew you were standing somewhere extraordinary. There was the sound of traffic all around us, the cold air against our faces, the water far below, and that enormous sky above us. For all the size and movement around us, I remember feeling strangely focused on just one person.
Pam.
The wind was blowing her hair across her face, and every so often she would brush it away. She was taking in the view, completely unaware that I was watching her almost as much as I was looking at San Francisco. I remember her turning toward me and smiling. There was nothing particularly dramatic about that little moment, but I can still see it. Behind her was one of the most spectacular views in the world, and somehow the view wasn't what held my attention. She was.
We kept walking until we reached the midpoint. I had been carrying that ring for weeks, imagining different possibilities and wondering how I would know when the right moment arrived. Then suddenly I didn't have to wonder anymore. There are moments in life when your mind argues with your heart. You analyze. You question. You consider every possible outcome. This wasn't one of them.
I looked at Pam standing beside me, and everything became remarkably clear. I thought about where we had both been before finding each other. The lives we had already lived. The children we had raised. The disappointments and joys we had experienced. The fact that neither one of us was standing there as some unfinished young person waiting for life to begin.
We knew something about life now.
We knew something about loss.
And we knew what it meant to be given another chance at love.
That was when I knew.
This was the moment.
Not because the Golden Gate Bridge was spectacular, although it was. Not because I had planned some elaborate proposal, because I hadn't. I knew because when I looked at Pam, I couldn't imagine walking toward the rest of my life without her beside me. What surprised me was that I wasn't imagining only the exciting parts of a life with Pam. Of course I wanted the trips, celebrations, dinners, laughter, and adventures.
But I wanted the ordinary life too. I wanted mornings across the breakfast table and evenings when neither of us had anywhere to go. I wanted grocery runs, projects around the house, family gatherings, quiet Sundays, and conversations at the end of long days. I wanted to know what it would feel like to grow older beside her. And when I tried to picture those years without Pam in them, the picture simply didn't look right.
Standing there at the center of that enormous bridge, it struck me that we were doing more than crossing the bay. We were crossing from the lives we had known into a future neither of us had expected to find.
I reached into my pocket and felt the small ring box I had carried for weeks. Suddenly my hands didn't seem to work quite as smoothly as they normally did. I turned toward Pam, and before I could overthink the moment, I lowered myself onto one knee.
Her expression changed immediately. Surprise first. Then recognition. Then that smile.
Traffic rushed behind us, and the wind continued pushing across the bridge, but for me the entire world seemed to narrow to the few feet between us. My heart was pounding hard enough that I was fairly certain Pam could hear it over the cars. I looked up at the woman I loved and asked her to marry me.
For perhaps only a second, I waited. Memory has stretched that second considerably.
Then Pam said yes.
I stood and slipped the ring onto her finger, although my hands weren't nearly as steady as I would have liked. Then I pulled her close. For a few moments we simply held each other in the middle of all that wind and traffic. I remember looking at her face afterward and seeing the same woman who had walked onto the bridge with me only minutes earlier, yet somehow everything between us felt different. She wasn't my wife yet, but she was going to be. That realization filled me with a happiness that was difficult to contain.
Suddenly everything around us seemed brighter—the bridge, the bay, the sky, and even the future waiting somewhere beyond the opposite shore. Nothing about the proposal had been elaborate or rehearsed, and perhaps that was why it felt so perfect. It was simply the two of us, suspended for a moment between where we had been and where we were going.
Before we called anyone, though, there were a few minutes when the news still belonged only to us. Pam kept looking at the ring. I kept looking at Pam. We laughed, hugged, and probably said some version of “Can you believe this?” more than once. Soon our families would know, and wedding plans would begin, but for those few minutes there was nothing to organize and no one else to tell. There was simply the wonderful realization that we had chosen each other.
We continued across the bridge as an engaged couple, and when we reached the other side, we called our families. We had crossed a bridge in more ways than one.
We chose July 27, 2019, for our wedding date — exactly two years and one day after we first met. That felt intentional. A quiet honoring of the journey that had brought us together. Then came the next question: Where do we do this? Some of our initial ideas included flying to Europe and being married in some romantic faraway dreamy city. But then our brother-in-law, Kent, stated the obvious, "You have to have a party."
We visited several venues, trying to imagine not simply where a ceremony could take place, but where our wedding could take place. There is a difference. You can walk into a perfectly nice venue and appreciate it without feeling anything. You notice the tables. You look at the room. You ask about food and capacity and parking and all the practical things you're supposed to ask about. But you're really waiting for something else. You're waiting to be able to picture the day. When we visited the Chart House, we could.
We walked the grounds slowly, no longer looking at the property like customers evaluating a venue. We were beginning to look at it like a bride and groom. I could picture my mother there. Pam could imagine Grant and Olivia. We began pointing to places as though the wedding were already happening around us—people gathering here, photographs there, the ceremony overlooking the water, friends laughing around the bar. The more we walked, the less we discussed whether it was right. We simply began planning our wedding inside it.
We could see friends standing around the outdoor patio laughing before dinner. We could imagine everyone moving inside afterward, eating, telling stories, raising glasses, and eventually filling the dance floor.
There was room for elegance without the place feeling stuffy. It could be beautiful without being formal for the sake of being formal. We wanted a wedding that felt special, but we also wanted people to relax. And, importantly, there was an outside bar. And an inside bar. In retrospect, perhaps we should have recognized that as foreshadowing. The Chart House didn't feel like a place where we would have to manufacture a celebration. It felt like a place where one could naturally happen. We looked at each other and knew.
This was it.
Then the planning began. Finding the DJ. Choosing the menu. Selecting decorations. Working through countless details that seem tiny until you're planning a wedding and suddenly discover that apparently every tiny detail requires a decision.
And Pam's friends stepped in. They didn't simply ask, "Do you need anything?" They helped. Wendy took charge of being Pam's personal attendant the day of the wedding. Suzy and Carrie helped Pam with the flower arrangements, and Carrie also sang at the wedding. There were phone calls, texts, last-minute questions, decorations spread across tables, and plenty of opinions offered with love. They were helping because they loved their friend and wanted her day to be everything she hoped it would be. There is something wonderful about seeing the people who love the person you love rally around her. All of her "Women of Adventure" friends would later join Pam at the reception for a personal song and dance performed just for me.
Through all the planning, I kept returning to the same thought: we get to do this. At this stage of life, neither of us took another chance at love for granted. We knew enough about life to understand that happy endings aren't guaranteed and second beginnings are even less so. Yet here we were discussing flowers and music, choosing a menu, making a guest list, and planning a wedding. Things that might once have felt stressful instead felt like evidence of grace. Not everyone gets another chance at this. We did.
Then July 27 arrived. The day was beautiful. Blue skies. Warm air. Sunshine that seemed almost personally assigned to us for the occasion. Before the ceremony, when I saw Pam for the first time, everything else seemed to recede. There she was. My bride. I had seen Pam dressed beautifully many times. I knew her face. I knew her smile. I knew the way her eyes changed when she laughed. But this was different.
She was absolutely radiant. The dress was breathtaking. Her hair was perfect. But what I remember most was her face. There was happiness in it—not the posed smile we had given the photographer a hundred times that day, but something softer and deeper. She looked excited, peaceful, beautiful and completely herself.
For a few seconds, I didn't see the activity around us. I didn't think about the schedule, the photographer, the guests, the ceremony, or any of the hundred details that had occupied our minds leading up to that day. I just saw her. And what struck me wasn't simply, She looks beautiful. It was something much deeper. That's my person.
That's the woman I want beside me when life is wonderful and when life is difficult. That's the person I want to tell things to first. That's the person whose hand I want to reach for. That's the person I want beside me when we're laughing, when we're worried, when we're traveling, when we're doing absolutely nothing. That's the woman I want to grow old with.
We spent time outside with the photographer, soaking in the sunshine and the excitement. There was laughter between poses, arms wrapped around shoulders, and that unmistakable feeling that something we had imagined for months was finally happening.
Soon our family gathered around us — children, parents, siblings, friends. All of these different branches of our lives were suddenly standing together in one place. Love wasn't dividing anything. It was multiplying.
One of the most meaningful moments for me was having my mother walk me down the aisle. She was 96 years old — great, sharp, determined, and full of quiet pride. That image will stay with me forever. Mom had already witnessed almost an entire century of life. She had seen me as an infant, a boy, a teenager, a husband, a father, and a man who had experienced both happiness and heartbreak. Now, after all those years, she was beside me as I prepared to begin another marriage and another chapter. I don't know exactly what she was thinking as we walked together, but I knew what I was thinking: how incredibly fortunate I was that she was still here to see this.
I held onto her carefully as we walked, but in some ways it felt as though she were still doing what mothers have always done—walking beside her son while he headed toward the next part of his life.
Then I took my place. And waited. There are moments when a few seconds somehow contain years. This was one of them. I looked toward the aisle and saw Pam.
She was walking toward me with her son, Grant. And there went my composure. Again. I had already been emotional that day, but watching the woman I loved coming toward me with her son beside her hit me in a completely different place. My eyes began filling with tears. I tried the usual male strategy of blinking them away and pretending nothing unusual was happening. It wasn't particularly successful. I watched every step. Then Pam looked up, and our eyes met. I don't know whether she could see the tears from where she was, but I suspect she could. She smiled, and in that instant I stopped noticing everyone else. There were people on both sides of the aisle, but I was watching only her come toward me.
When she finally reached me, I took her hand. It was such a small gesture compared with everything happening around us, but I remember the feeling of it. We looked at each other, smiled, and for a second I think both of us understood the same thing: after all the planning and anticipation, we were finally here.
Grant walking beside his mother made the moment even more meaningful because this wasn't only Pam walking toward me. Our families were walking toward one another too. Her history was coming with her. Mine was waiting for her. Jake, Talia, Grant, and Olivia were all there. Our children weren't spectators to this marriage. They were part of the story. Blended families aren't created by a ceremony. They are built over time. But on that day, standing there watching Pam and Grant approach, I could feel those separate lives becoming something new.
Pam's parents were there. Her brother and sister were there with their spouses. My brother Chuck and his wife Terry were there, along with their children. College friends came. Lifelong relationships gathered in one place. When you marry later in life, the guest list isn't just names. It's history. It's decades. It's people who have watched you succeed, stumble, recover, laugh, grieve, change, and somehow arrive at this particular place.
To stand before all of them and say, "This is the person I choose." That is powerful. Charlie Bench, a minister Pam knew, officiated our ceremony. It was beautiful, thoughtful and personal. Every word felt anchored in sincerity.
We had written our own vows. I thought I would make it through mine. I did not.
"That’s why today, in front of God, you, our friends, and our family, I take you to be my partner, loving what I know of you, and trusting what I do not know. Today, I give you my hand, my heart, and my love without condition, completely and forever."
Those words—“loving what I know of you, and trusting what I do not know”—meant more to me than anything I could have written about perfect love. At our age, we understood that marriage wasn't a promise that there would be no surprises. It was a promise to remain when the surprises came. By then, the tears weren't something to fight. They belonged there.
After the ceremony, everyone gathered outside. And that was when the release happened. The meaningful part was complete. We had said the vows. We were married. Now everybody could celebrate. There were hugs everywhere. People laughing. Family members taking pictures. Friends raising glasses. Conversations overlapping with conversations. Every few feet someone wanted another hug, another photograph, another toast. It was pure joy.
And then something curious began happening at the outside bar. There were people drinking on our tab whom I didn't recognize. At first, I assumed they must be someone's guest. Then there were more of them. Apparently, Pam and I had become extraordinarily popular in the few minutes since getting married. People who had simply come to the Chart House for dinner seemed to be enjoying our liquor and, from what we later heard, confidently telling others what good friends they were with Tim and Pam.
This was fascinating, because I had never met some of my closest friends before. Our social circle was expanding by the cocktail. I imagine the conversations went something like: "How do you know Tim and Pam?"
"Oh, we go way back."
"Really?"
"Absolutely. All the way back to...about six minutes ago."
But nobody cared. People were laughing. Drinks were flowing. The sun was shining. We were married. If complete strangers wanted to toast our future using our liquor budget, who were we to stand in the way of friendship?
When it was time to move inside to the dining hall, we didn't want the celebration to suddenly become formal. So the couples in the wedding party made their entrances one at a time — dancing their way into the room. There was no choreography. No rehearsal. No attempt at dignity. Which made it perfect. Each couple had a few seconds to decide what kind of dancers they apparently believed themselves to be, and they committed. The DJ called each couple, the room erupted, chairs turned toward the entrance, and suddenly grown adults who had never rehearsed a step in their lives were performing as though they'd been waiting years for this opportunity. Some danced well. Others danced enthusiastically. At a wedding, enthusiasm counts for more.
People cheered. Everyone laughed. The energy in the room immediately changed. By the time Pam and I entered, it no longer felt as though we were walking into a wedding reception. We were walking into a party exactly what we wanted.
For our first dance, we chose Ed Sheeran's Thinking Out Loud. We practiced. And practiced. And practiced. Pam has natural rhythm. I have determination. These are not the same thing. But somewhere in all that practicing, we created something that felt like us. When the music started, we walked onto the dance floor as husband and wife. It was magical.
There is a line in the song:
"Take me into your loving arms."
I pulled Pam a little closer. Her hand was in mine, my other hand rested against her back, and for a few moments all those hours of practicing disappeared. I wasn't counting steps anymore. I could feel her moving with me, see her smiling up at me, and hear the music without really listening to it. Around us were nearly everyone we loved, but somehow the dance floor felt private.
That night, those words felt different. We weren't two young people wondering what love might become someday. We were two people who had already lived enough life to understand what it costs to love someone and what a gift it is to be loved in return. I looked at Pam. She looked at me. For those few minutes, the room disappeared. I wasn't worried about whether I remembered every step. Well, maybe I was a little worried. But perfection wasn't the point.
The reception became everything we had hoped for. Heartfelt speeches. Good food. Laughter. Music. A dance floor that stayed busy. Olivia, our maid of honor, spoke beautifully. Jake, my best man, gave a short but meaningful speech. There's something about hearing your children stand up and speak at your wedding that humbles you. It reminds you how far you've come.
And then there was the liquor budget. We had set aside what we considered a generous amount. A very generous amount. At 7:30 p.m., it was gone. One of the Chart House employees approached me and asked whether I wanted to keep the tab open. It was 7:30. Of course I wanted to keep it open. The party was just getting started.
By this point, between our actual guests, our newly discovered "close friends" at the outside bar, and whoever else had apparently heard rumors of Tim and Pam's limitless hospitality, I was beginning to suspect we were financing beverage operations for the entire Chart House.
Then I learned about Jake and his father-in-law, Lou. They had been going back to the bar, selecting bottles of wine they particularly liked, and proudly bringing them back to their table. Apparently Jake's authorization procedure consisted of four words:
"It's my dad's wedding."
That was evidently sufficient documentation. Honestly, I loved it. That's what weddings are for. Celebration. Laughter. A little chaos. And stories that become funnier every time you tell them. Prills. Rubashs. Fritzes. They knew how to party.
Two memories stand out in a night of memories. One of my favorite memories was my mother on the dance floor. We had arranged for her to be taken home early in case she got tired. She refused. She stayed. She danced. She "hoofed it up," as I like to say. At 96 years old, she was out there enjoying every minute, apparently determined to demonstrate that the younger generations had no monopoly on stamina. She left near the very end — long after anyone expected. Watching her dance at our wedding was more than sweet. It felt like a blessing. She had always been steady, determined and full of strength. Her faith had carried her through nearly a century of life, and that night it seemed to shine brighter than ever. Watching her celebrate with us felt almost like generations were standing together in that room, cheering us forward. Even now, when I think about that night, I can see her smile.
The other unforgettable memory involved Pam, a candle, and the Chart House proving that sometimes wedding venues actually know what they're talking about. They had warned us not to use real candles at the head table because of previous incidents. We, apparently believing ourselves immune to the laws of fire, insisted on real candles anyway. In the middle of a conversation between Pam, Jake, and me, Jake suddenly said, “I smell smoke.” Pam turned around, and sure enough, the back of her wedding dress had actually started on fire from one of the candles. Thankfully, Jake reacted quickly and put it out before anything serious happened. What could have been a wedding-day disaster was over almost as quickly as it started, with no real harm done. We managed to prove the Chart House's point perfectly.
After the last dance and the final goodbyes, Pam and I stayed behind to help wrap things up. Then we headed back to our hotel. In one final bit of comedy, some of my college friends were staying directly across the hall. They were still awake. Waiting for us. Because of course they were. Lifelong friendships don't fade because you get older. They simply accumulate better stories.
Eventually Pam and I made it into our room and closed the door behind us. The quiet was almost startling. After an entire day of music, conversations, glasses clinking, people laughing, dancing, hugging, and calling our names, suddenly there was only the two of us. No photographer. No DJ. No guests. No schedule. Nothing left to organize.
Pam was tired. I was exhausted. Neither of us looked quite as polished as we had several hours earlier, and I think that made the moment even better. We sat together and talked about the day, laughing about things that had happened and trying to absorb how quickly it had all gone by. Eventually we became quiet. I looked at her and felt an enormous sense of gratitude. The woman beside me wasn't simply the bride from the photographs. She was my wife.
After all the excitement of the wedding, that quiet realization may have been one of the most romantic moments of the entire day.
The next morning, I woke before Pam and lay there for a few moments looking at her beside me. Yesterday's dress, music, flowers, speeches, dancing, laughter, and celebration were already becoming memories. Morning had reduced everything to its simplest form: Pam and me, lying beside each other with an entire marriage now ahead of us.
When she woke, I reached for her, and she moved closer. There was something wonderfully intimate about realizing that neither of us had anywhere to rush off to and nothing left to plan. We could simply lie there together and let those two new words settle into us: husband and wife.
I had proposed to Pam high above the water on one of the most famous bridges in the world. We had married surrounded by nearly everyone we loved. Yet lying beside her in that quiet hotel room, I understood something that neither the bridge nor the wedding could have taught me. Home wasn't going to be a particular house or city or destination. Home was going to be the life we created together.
And lying there with Pam in my arms, I knew I was home. The Golden Gate Bridge had marked our decision to move forward, and our wedding made that crossing official. Marriage didn't erase anything that had come before us, nor would we have wanted it to. We brought those years with us—the lessons, the children, the mistakes, the joy, the disappointments, the faith, and the people who had helped shape us. All of it crossed the bridge with us.
We couldn't see everything waiting on the other side, and of course we still can't. That's not how life works. Forever isn't knowing exactly where the road will lead or being promised that every mile will be easy. Perhaps forever is something both simpler and more demanding: finding the person you want beside you for whatever comes next, reaching for that person's hand, and choosing, day after day, to keep walking together.
On November 18, 2018, I reached for Pam's hand on a bridge in California. On July 27, 2019, I took that same hand and promised before God, our children, our families, and our friends that I would hold onto it for the rest of my life.
I still am.
