How we met - Part 3

“H
e stalked me,” Ann Will said.
“You didn’t have to tell him that,” Kirk Will responded, laughing.
When I met with Kirk and Ann to hear about their story, I didn’t realize quite how humorous this was to become. At the very first, Kirk asked Ann if she was going to sit on his lap as they sat down, and the chuckles continued from that point on. I told them I just wanted to listen as they talked about how they met, and those words “he stalked me” were the first words out of Ann’s mouth. And so they told me this story, the final in this series of “How we met.”
Ann was living in an apartment in Rapid City in the fall of 1976. A friend of Kirk’s also lived there, and the manager gave him the job of painting the apartments. Kirk helped with the project, making a little extra money. 
Ann was attending college studying to be a paralegal. She also worked in an attorney’s office. Each day after work, when she came home, Kirk met her and helped her up the stairs and to her apartment.
“He stalked me up the stairs every day,” Ann said. “He asked me every day if I would marry him.” 
She laughed at the memory. 
“I told him no, each time.”
Kirk does not describe it as stalking, of course. He said that he would take her gently by the elbow, each day, and make sure she got up the stairs safely.
“I remember, I always thought that she was going to be my wife,” he said. “That was the woman I was going to marry.” 
So each day he would ask her out. Undaunted by her refusals, Kirk would still ask Ann out, tell her they would one day marry and walk her to her apartment. 
When he was helping paint the apartments, he had told her that he was a cop. He didn’t tell her that he was in the Air Force at first. This was probably a good idea.
“My father told me not to date any of those Air Force boys,” Ann said. “My dad did not like those military boys because he had been one of those military boys. He knew what they were up to.” She laughed about it some more saying that it was more about how long the wives of military men were alone when they were deployed. Her parents are really supportive of the military, but he didn’t want that type of life for her. But there Kirk was in the military. When she found that out her first thought was she couldn’t date him anymore.
“But I didn’t lie to her,” Kirk said. He was an Air Force cop at the missile fields. So he was away for three or four days at a time. 
“I made him suffer for a while,” Ann said. At first she wouldn’t accept a date, even before she found out about him being in the Air-Force.
But she had to admit that “when he wasn’t there, I have to say, I kind of missed him.” 
She recalled that she loved the blue ring around his brown eyes. 
“He was a hard worker, too.” 
Her dad always told her to find a hard worker.
And Kirk kept asking her out when he was there, and he patiently waited for her to come around.
“Her roommates in the apartment finally convinced her to go out,” he said. 
They had told Ann that he was a nice man, always helping others, and that he was a real gentleman. So she finally agreed to go out with him. On their first date, they went out for pizza and a movie. The movie was “King Kong,” with Jeff Bridges and Jessica Lange. They recalled that it wasn’t a very good movie. But it was the beginning of the date that shocked Ann a bit. She remembered that Kirk had a CB radio in the car and that it had an external speaker attached. 
“I love you, Annie,” Kirk said into the CB so that the whole neighborhood could hear it. 
Embarrassed, Ann listened as Kirk announced to the world, “You’re going to marry me someday.” Despite this beginning to the date, she continued to see him.
“He was the only boyfriend that my dad liked,” Ann said. “Up till then, I only dated these cowboys, and horses always came first.” 
Her dad didn’t like any of those boys. But Kirk was a gentleman, he was a hard worker, and he treated Ann like she was more important – winning both her dad and Ann over.
“I was dressed right,” Kirk said. “And I had short hair, not hanging down to my shoulders.”
He doesn’t remember her dad saying anything about him being a cop in the Air Force when he told him. He had driven to her parent’s home in Broadus, Montana, just north of Wyoming and west of South Dakota to meet them. Ann’s dad liked him right away.
“My dad told me, ‘He’s a keeper, huh?’” Ann said.
On Valentine’s Day in 1977, Kirk again asked Ann to marry him. Finally, she said yes.
“He did it old school,” Ann said. “He got down on one knee. ... He did it right.”
“She made sure I asked for her dad’s blessing,” Kirk said. And of course, when he asked Ann’s dad for her hand in marriage, he agreed and blessed them.
“He also had to accept all my animals,” Ann said. “They came with the whole deal.” 
She had two dogs and two cats. Kirk was used to those. But she also had a Shetland pony, which Kirk did get used to and even learned to ride.
Kirk and Ann were married in her childhood church, First Congregational Church of Broadus, on Oct. 8, 1977.
“I always wanted a fall wedding so I could have fall colors,” Ann recalled. 
Their colors were yellow and burgundy.