How Katherine Atkinson first met her husband, Dennis, is not a story she shares often with others.
Not that she is hiding anything; it’s just that most people have never asked.
Katherine met her husband by answering a personal ad in The Western Producer in April 1969.
At the time, she was 23 years old and working as a cook in a nursing home in Winkler, Man. The ad belonged to Dennis Atkinson, a farmer near Garrick, Sask.
She does not remember what the ad said; only the letters and interactions that followed during the summer. Katherine and Dennis exchanged letters at least every other day.
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“And we phoned in between,” Katherine said.
“He had to go four miles (to the post office) to receive a phone call because he didn’t have one at home. Mom and Dad had a phone and I would write him a letter, say such and such a time, and I would phone him.”
“Mom and Dad didn’t like that very much,” she said. “Too many long distance phone calls.”
Though the calls were pricey, Katherine’s parents liked Dennis “right from the start.”
The pair decided to meet a few months later and Dennis made the 900 kilometre one way trip to Winkler that summer.
“The first time that he came up, he wasn’t quite sure where to go,” Katherine said. “And he came up at night. He didn’t know where to go, so he pulled over and slept in his truck till daylight.”
When Katherine was 15-years-old, her great-aunt brought up the topic of having a boyfriend.
“I remember so plain as plain can be. I was 15 years old and she said, ‘you haven’t gotten a boyfriend yet?’ And I said, ‘no.’ … And she said, ‘what are you looking for?’ I said, ‘I’m looking for a tall, dark, handsome farm boy from Saskatchewan.’ ”
Katherine said that turned out to be her first impression of Dennis.
“Tall, dark and handsome,” she said. “And wearing a cowboy hat. And I didn’t know if he had horses or not, but I found out later that he only had one. He had cattle and he was on a farm. We had lots of fun. He came up every two weeks. He was faithful. He’d come up to Manitoba.”
She visited Dennis once at his farm in September, and the couple married Nov. 20, 1969.
Because they never had a honeymoon, they decided to go to New Westminster, B.C., for their 25th anniversary.
“I’m not sure why that place, but that’s what he chose,” Katherine said. “That’s where we were going to go, but it never came to that.”
Dennis died in 1990, before they were able to make the trip.
Carol Reynolds, Katherine’s eldest daughter, had previously heard the story of how her parents met.
“I think I knew about it a long time ago and The Western Producer was such a staple in our house,” Reynolds said.
She compared her mother’s experience to her own experience with online dating and meeting her current boyfriend.
“So it’s just an older way of online dating, without the GPS and email,” Reynolds said to her mother in a recent conversation.
Although in Reynolds’ case, she never had to go to the post office to receive a phone call.
“So (the operator) heard all of your phone conversations?” she asked her mother.
“Yes, she did,” Katherine said with a laugh.
“Skype’s come a long way,” her daughter replied.
