Valentine's Day may have passed. but this is a great love story
Marny Elise Potter and Joseph Pritchard represent a marvelous love story for Valentine’s Weekend.
The year was 2011. Marny had been divorced for six years. Her first encounter with Joseph was at Catawba Brewing in Morganton. It was not an auspicious meeting.
Marny swept in with her usual super-extrovert, life-of-the-party, never-met-a-stranger grand entrance, stopping by table after table to greet all the folks she knew and introduce herself to those few she didn’t know.
Joseph was sitting with a co-worker and the co-worker’s girlfriend, who happened to be a friend of Marny’s. Marny went over to talk with her. Here is how she describes what happened next:
“My friend introduced me to both gentlemen. Her boyfriend greeted me and reached out his hand for me to shake. Joseph gave no response at all. None. At the time I thought, ‘Well, that guy’s a dud,’ and I moved on to join some other friends.”
Little did she know, but Joseph was smitten. He says, “I saw this lovely, luminous lady come in and stop at each table and when she did, she brought a certain glow to it. The people sitting there just lit up!”
He admits it was very unusual for him, but when she got to his table, he was totally tongue-tied and couldn’t seem to get words out, kind of like the classic comedic stammer, “humina … humina”. And he was mad at himself when she left.
Some enchanted evening
Several weeks later, Marny remembers it was a Thursday evening in July, she ran by Catawba Brewing in Morganton again before meeting a friend at the movies.
Joseph remembers it this way: “I didn’t know it then, but my life was about to experience a eucatastrophe. It’s a word originated by the “Lord of the Rings” author and Oxford University philologist, J. R. R. Tolkien, my favorite author. A catastrophe is a sudden horrible turn of events. Inversely a eucatastrophe is a sudden turn of great good fortune. Enter Marny.”
“As she made her way past the tables to the bar, she stopped to greet everyone. And just like the first time I saw her, each table lit up like a searchlight! I had to meet this woman! I saw my chance! I caught her between tables and gave the classic line, ‘Hey Marny, could I buy you a beer?’ As I came back from the bar, the chair next to her mysteriously slid out! My life would never be the same! We talked and talked until she had to leave.”
Good ol’ what’s-his-name
Humorously, Marny says her first thought when he asked to buy her the beer was “Oh my, what was his name?” But she said “sure,” and settled at a table, while Joseph went up to the bar. This time it was a totally different encounter. She agrees that the chemistry was bubbly, and they chatted easily!
Before long Marny had already invited him to the Waldensian Presbyterian Church in Valdese on Sunday where she served as worship leader for the Connections contemporary service and organist for the traditional service.
She also invited him to a wine tasting she was going to the following Thursday at the Hickory Wine Shoppe. She then abruptly paused and said, “Oh wait, maybe I should’ve waited to give you the chance to ask me out!”
Before leaving to meet her good friend, Beth Ann Miller, for the movie, she and Joseph had talked about meeting on Facebook sometime. She says, “The only problem was, I didn’t know his last name! All evening, she had tried the old trick of introducing him to some of her Valdese buddies who were there that night. It almost worked. “Oh Joseph, do you know my friend Tim? … David? … Azzam?
Each time, Joseph would rise and stick out his hand and say, ‘Hi, I’m Joseph Pritchard,’ but it wasn’t clear enough for me to understand.”
“I finally left, thinking he had said BRIDGER. Imagine my disappointment when I got home and logged in, and there was no Joseph Bridger! Then to my surprise, almost immediately a chat popped up that said, ‘Hi, Marny!’ That’s how I first learned that it’s PRITCHARD! We ended up chatting online for hours that night.”
From church to the Waffle House
Because Marny already had plans on Friday and Saturday, that Sunday at Waldensian Presbyterian Church ended up being their first date, and it was a doozy, because she says, “After church we went to see Captain America at the movies, after which we went to The Grind Café until it closed, then to Yianni’s Restaurant until it closed, then to walk around town, and THEN to Waffle House, because it was the only place still open. We talked until 3:30 a.m.! We ended up having eleven dates over the next two weeks!”
And the rest, as they say, is history!
Joseph Pritchard and Marny Elise Potter got engaged on New Year’s Eve, at 12:01 a.m. (technically New Year’s Day, 2014) and married in May of that year in a simple family and “heart family” ceremony.
The private nuptials were followed, however, by an after-party for more than 400 at the American Legion Hut in Valdese!
Marny and Joseph are still in love, still conversing over a wide-range of topics, still partying 10 years later!
Fred Schuszler is a columnist for The Paper. He may be reached at fredschuszler@gmail.com.
