LANIGAN, Sask. – Some people use The Western Producer to get their weekly dose of farm news and market information.
Some use it to buy and sell things, while others use it as a forum in which they can express their opinions.
Beverly and Joe Pratchler used it for something else – to find the love of their lives.
The two met through the personal ads in the newspaper’s classified advertising section, a connection that resulted in them getting married just over two years after their first meeting.
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Beverly, 47, and Joe, 54, are more than happy to share their experience, saying it might provide an inspiration to others in the same situation.
“It’s nice for other people to know you can meet someone this way,” she said, as the two told their story to a visitor the week before Valentine’s Day.
“Some people thought I was crazy, and that it was a waste of money, but if you have the right attitude it can work. The ad cost $120 and it was worth every penny.”
Their story started in March 2005, when Beverly placed an ad describing herself as a SWF (single white female in the lingo of personal ads) looking for a “cowboy-rancher partner” and describing her interests in animals, sports, music and movies.
One of the people who read that ad was Joe, who raises cows and horses on his 160 acre farm just south of Lanigan, and whose first marriage had ended a few years earlier.
“I had done some dating and some on-line computer stuff, but it didn’t work out,” he recalled. “Then I thought maybe I should try The Western Producer. It might get me more what I’m looking for.”
He saw Bev’s ad, but didn’t think he was ready to start a new relationship. So he circled it and put it into a desk drawer.
Meanwhile, Beverly, who worked and lived in Regina, received 45 responses. She phoned every one of them and met some, but nothing came of it.
“You don’t know until you’ve actually met someone, but I just didn’t connect,” she said.
Fast-forward one year.
It’s March 2006 and, with Bev’s ad from a year earlier still sitting in the desk drawer, Joe decided to place his own ad in the WP’s personal section.
He quickly got two responses, one from a woman in Alberta, and the other from Beverly, in the form of a four-page letter.
“I told him everything he could possibly want to know,” she recalled with a laugh.
“Favourite singers, movies, movie stars – if you didn’t like John Wayne and George Strait, you could forget it.”
Joe liked what he read, including the fact that she liked horses, and urged on by some friends, gave her a call. They arranged to get together in Regina April 29 (they both remember the date) and ended up having what Bev described as “the longest date of my life.”
After spending the entire day together – shopping, having ice cream at Wascana Lake, going out for lunch and dinner, taking in a movie – they knew each other pretty well.
Bev said it was literally love at first sight.
“I knew right from the start,” she said. “I looked at him and he made the back of my knees sweat and I just felt weak.”
Joe shakes his head and said he thought she was crazy when she told him that, adding, “and I still do.”
Bev placed the ad with the intention of finding a husband, and that happened when the two married in August 2008.
Their love story has a happy ending, but it hasn’t been completely smooth sailing from that first date to their wedding 2½ years later.
Beverly has had to deal with some major health issues over the past two years.
She has chemical and food allergies that make everyday life more complicated.
When she met Joe she was already experiencing some serious pain in her lower abdomen, which was diagnosed as fibroids, which are benign (non-cancerous) uterine tumours.
She was hospitalized in the summer of 2008, and eventually underwent a hysterectomy Oct. 1, shortly after moving to Joe’s farm in Lanigan.
Post-surgical tests indicated cancer. She underwent a second, nine-hour operation in December and spent Christmas and New Year’s in hospital being treated for blood clots.
She’s now undergoing chemotherapy and maintains an optimistic outlook, talking about their future together.
Beverly said that in that situation, some men might have looked to back out of the relationship, but Joe says that thought never crossed his mind.
“Joe didn’t sign up for any of this, but he’s been my rock,” Beverly said.
