In late 1996, I was a 41-year-old divorcee with two young children. My girlfriend had introduced me to Dan at a party in Waimanalo to see if there was any interest on either of our parts.

Dan had recently come out of a nasty divorce himself and seemed to be a really nice guy. We were introduced in passing, but that was about it.

A couple months later, I had an extra ticket to the February 1997 Pro Bowl. After calling my girlfriend for encouragement, I called Dan to ask him if he wanted to go with me.

I'm not sure to this day if he really remembered me from our introduction, but being a huge sports fan, any opportunity to go to the Pro Bowl was fine with him!

We had a good time. He made me laugh and he was quickwitted. I liked him. He called the next week and we went out for sushi on our second date. This date, in my opinion, was a disaster. Oh, well.

I went on with my life, and in late June 1997 took my kids on a trip to the Mainland, where I received an injury to my brain that I was unaware of until we got back home. I went to my doctor for severe headaches, whereupon we discovered during a CT scan that I had two subdural hema-tomas in my head.

I underwent brain surgery the next day and was facing a long recovery. It was a life-altering and scary experience.

Dan had heard about my surgery and started calling me every day to see if I was OK, if I needed anything.

He brought over groceries, mowed my grass, took my kids to the park.

I had to get used to letting someone do things for me. He taught me cribbage and backgammon, and we spent hours talking about important things in life, the kind of things that one thinks about after a brush with death. We became really good friends.

This friendship grew over the next few months and more feelings began to emerge, but he had not made any advances in the romantic direction. I was bound and determined not to make the first move; I wanted to see how long it took him, and I wanted him to be ready.

Finally, in October of 1997, as we walked on Kailua Beach one evening, he just grabbed me and gave me a long, loving kiss. The rest is history.

We've been together now for 10 years, my kids are grown and off to college and it's time to become husband and wife.

We have gone to every Pro Bowl since that first one in 1997 because it is the anniversary of our first date. We are now both in our 50s, we are still best friends, which is a very large part of how our relationship works so well.

We really like each other, we love and support each other and want to spend the rest of our lives together.

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