Paula & Mike — The Matchmaker’s Barbecue

For a man who would marry Paula after two and a half months of dating, Mike spent an impressive amount of time buying lunch.

Fortunately, Paula had a sister who was willing to help with more than the sandwiches.

Mike first found them while trying to arrange food for his workers’ Christmas party. There had been a Mexican restaurant at the address in Santa Ana, but Paula and her sister were preparing to open a little sandwich shop there. They didn’t make Mexican food. They weren’t catering. As a business errand, the visit was a thorough failure.

But when Mike’s eyes met Paula’s, he asked when the shop would open.

A couple of weeks later, on its first morning, he arrived for coffee and a bagel. He came back for lunch. Then he kept coming: every day, the same dependable presence, a nice man Paula loved seeing walk through the door.

For the better part of a year, this arrangement worked beautifully for everything except getting them together.

Mike kept his feelings to himself, though not quite as successfully as he might have imagined. Paula could see the look in his eyes. He looked like a man who wanted to ask her out and couldn’t bring himself to do it. “Smitten” was his word for it. She was interested, too, but she was also shy. Between them, they had plenty of attraction and nobody comfortable enough to act on it.

Early photograph of Paula and Mike — Paula & Mike, early on.

Her sister supplied a way around that.

She bought Paula a barbecue that came in a box, with instructions, nuts, bolts, and more assembly than Paula felt capable of managing. Then she convinced Paula to ask Mike to come over and put it together. In return, Paula would make him a barbecue chicken dinner.

It was an excellent arrangement for two people who could apparently go on liking each other across a sandwich shop indefinitely. Paula wouldn’t have to ask for a date. She could ask for help. Mike wouldn’t have to invent an approach. There was a job to do, and dinner afterward.

The sister did not leave Mike’s side of the transaction unattended. As he remembers it, his future sister-in-law made it clear that helping Paula was a good idea and that he ought to do it.

This was not matchmaking left to chance. Both parties had been given their assignment.

Once they were together away from the shop, they needed considerably less assistance.

They could talk as friends and enjoy each other’s company, rather than remain the customer and the woman he was always happy to see. Mike already felt he knew Paula’s character. His feelings had been growing through those months of visits; the time alone with her opened up his heart. He knew he wanted to be with her—and to marry her.

Paula remembers mainly talking that first evening. She isn’t certain they even kissed goodnight. Mike remembers their first kiss and is fairly sure he made the move, though the exact sequence has blurred. What both remember clearly is how much harder it became to be apart.

The man who had spent months not asking for a date was no longer having difficulty identifying what he wanted.

More than the two of them

Making a family.

There was more to consider, however, than the two of them. Both had been single parents for years. Both had been married before. Becoming a couple meant finding out how their children would fit into a life together.

Their care went into that part of the courtship. They began having outings with the children, more like family gatherings. Mike took Paula to meet his parents, with the children along. There was no single incident Paula can point to as proof that this could become one family. It was comfortable. Being together felt right.

Mike and Paula with Betsy and Herb.

The proposal

Ask me again.

Being shy did not mean she had no standards.

When Mike proposed, he chose a nice restaurant. He thought it would be romantic.

Paula had a different assessment. The restaurant was busy, and the occasion didn’t feel special enough. She wanted him to ask again.

Later, when he took her home, she had him get down on one knee and make another attempt. The setting and posture received revisions. The words did not change much.

“Pretty much I said the same thing,” Mike remembers.

They laughed. He asked her to marry him. She said yes.

Paula describes herself as a “bit of a brat” about the proposals—two of them, possibly three, before she felt he had done it right. Mike’s account is gentler. That was what she wanted, and he wanted to make her happy.

They could have spent a year engaged. But neither saw much reason to prolong the part in which they weren’t yet sharing a life. Paula’s family would be coming down for Thanksgiving; it seemed the right time to bring everyone together, get married, and begin.

So they did, two and a half months after the barbecue had finally broken the stalemate.

The Matchmaker’s Barbecue

Some assembly required.

Making a family.

Ask me again.

A wonderful man. A wonderful life.