Real-life love stories: Valley couples stick together amid life’s challenges

The stories of how Las Vegas Valley couples met and fell in love are as varied as the couples themselves. With Valentine’s Day here, the staff of View Neighborhood Newspapers talked with some of those couples about how they got together.

‘DON’T SAY A WORD’

Love is in the air. It’s always been in the air for Sun City Summerlin couple Andy and Lee Lawson, ever since the day they met as high school seniors in Arizona.

Andy and Lee attended the same high school in Tucson, but it was so large — 5,600 students — that they didn’t meet until their final year when both were in the senior class show. They started talking during rehearsals, and a spark was instantly struck. At one point, Lee went outside and hopped up on a table. That’s when Andy strode straight up to her and kissed her. It wasn’t a quick little peck.

“It was really special, like, ‘wow,’ ” Lee said. “I never forgot that kiss.”

They wanted to date, but Lee’s father was strict and said only a Jewish boy would do.

Andy was not Jewish.

After graduation, Lee went to Rochester, N.Y., to visit family. She found a job, and Andy followed, hoping to date her. But Lee’s family’s influence was strong. She said she couldn’t date him, so they went their separate ways.

She met a nice Jewish man, married and raised a family. But those moments with Andy still lingered in her mind. Years later, she attended her 20-year high school reunion.

“I (saw) Andy for about 45 seconds,” Lee said. “He started to walk toward me, and he said, ‘Just tell me …’ and his wife walked in the room.”

His wife’s strong rebuke kept Andy from finishing what he wanted to say.

After 20 years, Lee and her husband divorced. She moved back to Tucson and, finding Andy unavailable, married for a second time. Her second husband died 14 years later. Lee had another relationship, but her significant other developed lung cancer and died within four months of being diagnosed.

“I was taking care of him, and I picked up the paper one day, and I read that Andy’s wife had passed away,” Lee said.

It was a turning point. It was a time when both were unattached and free to pursue what might have been. Realizing the parallels in their lives, Lee felt strong enough after eight months of being single again to call Andy.

“He said to me, ‘When are we going to get together? It’s our turn now,’ ” Lee said. “We were both a nervous wreck.”

Two days before their date night, Lee got her hair colored and came home to find red roses waiting for her. The card read, “Can’t eat. Can’t sleep. Can’t wait to see you. Love, Andy.”

Then she got a call.

It was Andy. He had hurried back to town a day early.

“I said, ‘I can’t wait till tomorrow night. What are you doing tonight?’ ” he said.

He arrived promptly at 6:30 p.m., and when Lee opened the door, he put his finger to his lips.

“He said, ‘Don’t say a word, just kiss me,’ ” she said.

“I knew that (would give me) the answer, that I would know, that we both would know, if there was a connection,” Andy said.

They talked and kissed and laughed almost the entire night and never made it to dinner. Both said it was as if the intervening years had never happened.

Their wedding rings are inscribed with “It’s Our Turn Now.” Their personalized license plate reads: DSAWJKM.

It stands for: Don’t Say A Word Just Kiss Me.

— Jan Hogan, Summerlin Area View staff writer

PARTNERS IN BUSINESS, LIFE

Love stories often have the same narrative: Two people meet, fall in love, do crazy and romantic things together and get married. It often ends there or will fast-forward to the future with the couple raising happy children and staring into each other’s eyes as if they were on their first date.

The reality of marriage is far from a Hollywood plot, but it can be just as beautiful.

Dina Proto and Dina “Dom” Poist-Proto are the faces behind Teazled, an LGBT greeting card company. They came up with their business after witnessing their children struggle to find the right card for their two-mother household. While their business is now blooming, their marriage wasn’t always easy.

The couple met 10 years ago while working as nurses at a local hospice. Dina was married with children, and Dom was in an eight-year relationship with her then-fiance.

“We became friends first, but then I don’t know what came over me,” Dom said. “We were standing at a nurses station, and I just looked at her, and I said, ‘Have you ever thought about being with another woman?’ She looked up and said, ‘No!’ and put her head down. That was the turning point of our friendship.”

Despite Dina’s answer, the couple knew they had something beyond friendship. Shortly after becoming friends, Dina divorced for the second time, and Dom filed for divorce three months after being married.

The pair began dating in August 2005, and on Valentine’s Day 2006, Dina gave Dom a card with a heart-shaped candy that said, “Marry Me?”

“I stared down at it, and I remember thinking, ‘Yes, I want to,’ but a little part of me wasn’t 100 percent sure,” Dom said. “So I said no, and I kept the heart and tucked it away.”

“Our relationship almost ended there,” Dina said. “But I knew (she’d) fold.”

Two years later, Dom proposed to Dina with the same heart-shaped candy she placed inside a box.

They married in September 2008 in Laguna Beach, Calif. Reality caught up with them a year later when Dina opted to have a bilateral mastectomy.

“I didn’t have breast cancer; they caught it before it got to that point,” Dina said. “But that experience taught me how to re-evaluate life. It pushed us to (start our business).”

Teazled was started in 2011.

Dom’s mother, who was against the couple’s relationship in the beginning, inspired messages written inside the cards. It took her five years to come to terms with Dom’s choice.

The couple dealt with the emotional heartache of having a family member against their relationship, but despite the challenges, Dom’s mother finally came to terms with her daughter’s relationship.

“Now she calls Dina more than she calls me,” Dom said. “You really don’t know about the good times until you’ve gone through bad times.”

— Sandy Lopez, North View staff writer

MARRIAGE STRENGTHENED BY troubles

When Henderson couple Eddie and Antoinette Garcia married 13 years ago, they became husband and wife. However, when Eddie’s limbs were amputated because of an illness, the couple not only re-learned their roles as husband and wife, they also became a man with no hands or feet and a caretaker.

Although they consider each challenge temporary, it’s clear their love is permanent.

“In the beginning, it was very hard,” Antoinette said. “He would get upset, or I would get upset, and I would be like, ‘You know what? We have to remember that this is temporary. Everything is temporary. You’re going to learn how to do this. We’re going to learn how to do this.’ ”

The couple’s love story began as acquaintances in elementary school when Antoinette’s mother would take her, Eddie and his brother to school. It wasn’t until high school that a friendship developed, and they began attending school games, going out to eat and talking on the phone together.

“I still remember my mom knocking on the door at 3 a.m. telling me to cut it off, so we had to sneak the phone calls late at night,” Eddie said. “We just continued our friendship, and we talked about anything and everything or sometimes nothing at all.”

After a few years of “officially dating,” Antoinette went shopping, put down a deposit on an engagement ring and called Eddie, who was home watching a football game.

“There was no proposal,” Antoinette said. “It was, ‘We’re getting married. Do you want a say in it or not?’ ”

The Garcias married Aug. 16, 2001, on a beach in Hawaii. Eddie said he contemplated filing for a divorce a few months later when Antoinette had “extreme mood swings” during a family trip. He was unaware that she was pregnant.

“I was so embarrassed. I thought she had just lost it, and we were going to have to get a divorce and move on,” Eddie said. “When she told me she was pregnant, all those feelings immediately disappeared. There was no doubt. I understood.”

After the birth of daughter Haley, the couple had four miscarriages while trying for a second child.

Looking for a fresh start in Southern California, they tried to purchase an investment home in Las Vegas, but the loan required that they live and work in the valley.

Desperate to provide for his family, Eddie moved to the valley on a whim to live in the house and work as a teacher for the Clark County School District. Antoinette joined Eddie after a year and became pregnant with son Ryan; however, the couple lost their house during the recession.

While teaching at Canyon Springs High School, Eddie fell ill with what he thought was strep throat. Within days, Eddie’s internal organs began to fail, so doctors placed him in a medically induced coma. The medications used to save his organs caused poor circulation in his hands and feet, forcing doctors to amputate them.

“After the surgeries, I told (Antoinette) that I understood if she wanted to leave me, but she just looked at me like I was crazy,” Eddie said. “She didn’t even hesitate. She just said, ‘No, we’re in this together.’ ”

Once discharged from the hospital, Antoinette became the hands and feet of the relationship by helping Eddie shower, get dressed and put on his prosthetic legs.

“There’s no room for an ego in our relationship. None at all,” Antoinette said. “Even though we still have them, we try not to because he needs to tell me what he needs, and I need to do it. If he needs ice in his water, I need to put ice in his water. It’s not a simple request; it’s a meaningful request for him.”

Although Antoinette is sympathetic to Eddie’s disability, he said she does not cater to him.

“One of my favorite stories from the hospital is when I had just had my hands amputated, and I wanted a drink of water,” Eddie said.

“I could have technically reached over and got a sip with the straw, but I tried to be a big baby about it. … She looked at me and she goes, ‘No sympathy; you can get it. Get it.’ After that, I knew I was going to be fine.”

From cooking to coaching sports, the Garcias have adapted back to their active lifestyle and learned to remain positive.

“When things get tough, the easy thing to do is give up, but we just keep battling things together as they come,” Eddie said. “Our journey together is not over. It’s just beginning.”

— Caitlyn Belcher, Henderson View staff writer

LOVING, LEAVING LAS VEGAS

The first time Pete and Marty Walsh drove through Nevada, they were not impressed.

“We had a Rand McNally road atlas we were using to navigate around the country,” Marty said. “We made little notes about the places on it. On the Nevada page, there was just one big word, ‘UGH!’ across the whole page.”

The pair had driven across the state on U.S. Highway 50, dubbed “the loneliest road in America” in a Life magazine article.

“At the time, I just saw it as barren and empty,” Pete said. “I grew up in Ireland, and all the mountains there are green and covered with life. After being here a few years, I saw those mountains with different eyes. I’d say now that ‘naked and raw’ is a better way of saying it. You can see billions of years of history on those mountains, and then you’ve got Vegas, where everything is new below them.”

Before moving to Las Vegas in 1999, the Walshes hadn’t lived anywhere for more than a few years. They longed to see places they hadn’t been. When they arrived here, they ended up setting down the deepest roots they had ever had, buying a home, setting up the Trifecta Gallery downtown and helping transform the 18b Arts District.

Now, they’re pulling up stakes again and heading back to the country farmland where Pete’s family has lived for generations.

“We’ve said every year, ‘Is this the year we go back?’ and it never was,” Pete said. “This year, we thought, if we don’t do it now, we might never, so we’re going there, and we’re building our little dream house.”

The couple met on Martha’s Vineyard in Massachusetts, where Marty had moved to start a deli with a friend while Pete way plying his skills as a carpenter.

“We met at a restaurant and went on a date the next night,” Marty said. “I was very impressed that he was such a gentleman.”

Both thought of it as a summer romance, but when Pete was called back home to Ireland because of an illness in the family, he couldn’t stop thinking about Marty.

“They say absence makes the heart grow fonder, and I guess that’s the case,” Pete said. “Maybe we wouldn’t have stayed together if I hadn’t gone home, but when I came back, we got pretty serious.”

The couple married on Chappaquiddick Island in Massachusetts and lived on Martha’s Vineyard for eight years, with side trips to visit other places, including the long road trip that took them through Nevada the first time.

“We did a trip around the states in a Volkswagen bus,” Pete said. “We went 22,000 miles and went through 46 states in a hippie van.”

Their trips often led to places they didn’t expect. After spending the holidays with Marty’s parents in Louisville, Ky., they headed south to spend the winter somewhere warm.

“We were thinking St. Thomas or the Virgin Islands — someplace like that,” Pete said. “We stopped at a youth hostel in Georgia and ended up running the place.”

The hostel was managed by the owner’s son, who was called to the Peace Corps about the time the Walshes showed up. They were hired to manage the place and lived that winter in a treehouse on 90 acres of Georgia forest.

Pete and Marty came to Las Vegas to get in on the building boom, but Marty’s art and gallery soon became the center of the couple’s lives. Pete helped Marty renovate the gallery, and they ran it together, with Marty as the public face, choosing art, nurturing artists and bringing in notable speakers, while Pete quietly held things together in the background.

The Walshes have at least a few more months to work things out as they trim their belongings, say their farewells and prepare to head back across the ocean. They’ll keep in touch with their friends in Las Vegas and keep an eye on the local art scene.

Marty believes the local art scene is poised to move on to its next evolution. She feels that Pete’s description of the Nevada landscape is an apt one of what they’re leaving behind.

“Naked and raw — that’s a good way of putting it,” she said. “I think that’s kind of a metaphor for the whole state and the arts district. It’s open and exposed and ready to grow.”

— F. Andrew Taylor, East Valley View staff writer