2016, I met this lady Stephanie on OkCupid. So, you know we matched, we talked. I met her at a coffee shop, and it was like, best first date I ever had. It was amazing. Great connection. We talked for like two and a half hours. And at that point, she said, I wasn’t intending to tell you this on, you know, the first time we met, but, I really like you, and I, I think you should know, I've got stage four cancer. And, I just, I, at the time, I, I mean, I'd never heard anything like that. But I, I said, well, I won't treat you any differently because of it, you know.

So, yeah, we, we went out like six times in the next ten days. Really close. And, like, a month later, it's August 1st. I said, I know it's early, but, you know, you want to go on a road trip? She did. So we, we went to New Orleans for five days and kind of, that's, I'd say that's where we fell in love.

And, it was a couple of weeks after that. It was November 16th. We, she said, I want to stop by my office on the way back to her place. And I said, okay, cool. And her office was in - you can look, from her office, you can see that spot over there. So we went up to her office, and I think she basically was looking out the window to, you know, to pick a spot. And she said, I want to show you something. And she took my hands and said, I want to spend the rest of my life with you.

So, yeah, that, that was amazing. And we got married the next month. And, I mean, we, we traveled. It was the, it was the best part of my life. Yeah. She, she was, you know, like, the best person, the best person I know, the best person I ever met. You know, I got to marry. And, so. That's. Yeah. And that's only two years, you know. She, she died December 5th, 2018. So she died the day before our anniversary.

But, I've told people, you know, losing her was the most painful thing. You know. That, that was the most painful thing you could go through. But, but I’d do it again every time. You know?

 

Gary Zeiger

Born in 1968 in Tyler, Texas