We met at a country music dance club.

I was a regular at the country club, I went there with my girl friends and we would line dance, watch the electric bull riders, and gossip the night away.

Cris had started two stepping when he lived in Los Angeles. After he was transferred to the San Francisco area for work, he continued to dance. He had been going to the Saddle Rack, my favorite country club, for about a year when he first asked me to dance. We danced to a single dance (I'm not a very graceful dance partner), and he disappeared.

After that we danced together from time to time. However, I have a very hard time hearing in crowded noisy places so I wasn't able to find out his name, and didn't even realize that he had an accent until we had danced together quite a few times. I just called him "the guy in the black cowboy hat."

One night as we were chatting, he told me that he worked for Dreamworks.

I was so stunned! All my life I had dreamed of working for an animation company, I have seen all the animated movies from all the big animation houses, I've read all the books about the making of the big movies, I couldn't believe that "the guy in the black cowboy hat" worked at the company that had created some of my favorite films.

So I said, "Really? I loved Finding Nemo!" - Ok, that was stupid. I later realized my mistake: Pixar made Finding Nemo, not Dreamworks.

He looked at me blankly and changed the subject.

He told me that his birthday was in a few days and that he would like to take me out to see, The Incredibles, on the opening night. Unfortunately I told him I couldn't go because I had already promised "my friends" that I would go with them. In reality my "friends" were my parents.

The truth was that my mom and dad were flying out from Wisconsin to visit me, something they only do once or twice a year. But, I wasn't about to explain why my parents lived so far away, or why a 26 year old thought parents were more important to take to a kids movie than an attractive guy. That was just too much to get into inside a noisy and crowded club!

So he disappeared again, I have since learned that he was a little mad and frustrated with me at that point. We might never spoken or danced together again except...

The next week at work, I fell and hurt my knee. I wound up on crutches for two weeks with a knee brace. I might not be able to dance, but I was determined my injury wasn't going to keep me away from the Saddle Rack! So, I went on crutches and watched as my friends danced.

As I sat alone wishing I could join them, a voice came from behind me, "Feeling left out?" I turned around and it was Cris. No sympathy, just a comment...

"Yea" I said. "By the way, I know that Dreamworks made Shrek and Shark's Tale, not Finding Nemo, I don't know how I got them mixed up!"

Just then, the music changed to a slow dance song. My friends walked up to us and Cris took the crutches away from me and handed them to one of the girls.

"HEY!" I yelled over the music. And then he picked me up by my waist and carried me out onto the dance floor. He held me up by the waist through the entire slow song. When the dance was over, he deposited me back onto my chair with my friends and disappeared again. WOW! I looked for him for a while but when I couldn't see him anywhere, I assumed he must have left for the night.

However, late in the evening, he appeared out of nowhere and handed me a piece of paper with his name and phone number stating simply, "I like you. I think that you like me too. So call me if you're interested in going out with me sometime."

He disappeared again before I could react and give him my number instead. Needless to say, three days later I got up the nerve to call my black hatted cowboy, and the rest is history.

We celebrated our marriage earlier this year and still enjoy dancing together at the Saddle Rack.