Meet: Come summer 2004, Melissa Perry became tired of the dating game. So, when a pal offered up “the perfect guy,” Perry brought more skepticism than enthusiasm to the adventure.
In a Thursday morning phone call, Perry and Michael Holmberg agreed to meet at 5 p.m. the following Sunday at Dave & Busters in Denver. Holmberg considered the date “a done deal” and saw no need to reconfirm it. Perry thought otherwise.
“I was literally going into this date like, ‘Boy, this isn’t going to work. He didn’t even follow up.’ Then, he calls about 10 minutes before we’re supposed to meet to say he’s running late,” Perry recalls. “I’ve been on a gazillion blind dates, so I went into it thinking it’s going to be another crash and burn.”
She was wrong.
Match: While neither would call it love at first sight, Perry and Holmberg found common ground in their small-town childhoods. She grew up in Buena Vista, he in Bismarck, N.D. “We talked about our roots,” Perry says. “We had in common some of the small city, with large-city habits.”
What struck Perry the most, however, was that Holmberg really listened and took part, rather than merely weathering the conversation. Friends had jokingly advised him to “just sit there and not say anything,” but Holmberg knew “that wasn’t a good strategy.”
Before Perry, Holmberg had maintained a strict list of requirements, setting aside women who didn’t fit “the profile.” “As I got older,” he says, “I came to realize that’s not really what matters. I was just going into it with an open mind. One thing that attracted me to her is that she tells me things straight out.”
For example, on their third date, Perry bluntly set the stage. “We had ‘the talk,”‘ she says. “I told him, ‘I’m not ready for a ring, but there will be times in our relationship when you are either in or you’re out. If you’re out, that’s fine. I’d rather know.’
“There was no specific timeline. This has to happen at three months, this at six months, but basically my point was there should be a mutual feeling of ‘Yes, this is worth committing to.’ It may be two weeks. It may be five months.”
“It kind of shocked me at first,” Holmberg acknowledges. “I was like, ‘Whoa, I’d better make a decision here,’ but I knew that I was interested enough to keep seeing her. For her to come out so boldly, I’ve never had a girl say something like that.”
Marry: Both come from families “where you get married once, and that’s that,” Perry says, so they did not take the road toward marriage lightly. They worked hard to find ways to blend their busy schedules.
“We’re both extremely involved with different things,” says Perry, who is active in community gymnastics programs. “He’s the first guy who didn’t question all my coaching and didn’t treat me like there was something wrong with that.”
The couple married Thanksgiving weekend in an elegant event presided over by Deacon Phil Harrington, who told the nearly 250 guests and 30-plus member wedding party, which included more than a dozen of Perry’s gymnasts, that brand-new marriages are “the freshest sign of God’s love.”
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