Cupid’s arrow took variety of paths for Summerlin couples

It's that time of year when thoughts turn to love eternal. With Valentine's Day just ahead, View looks at stories of how some area couples met.

FUTURE HUSBAND SAVED HER LIFE WHEN THEY WERE KIDS

Patrick and Margie Davis, who live near Summerlin, grew up in New York City but in different neighborhoods. The first time they met was when he saved her life.

Margie's family frequented the Miramar Swimming Pool in Manhattan. Patrick was a lifeguard with jet black hair, blue eyes and a body sculpted from being a high diver and the captain of his high school swim team.

"When I was 11, I can remember it to this day, someone pushed me in the deep end ---- it was about 7 feet deep ---- and I got panicky, you know, and he jumped in and pulled me out," Margie said.

Patrick said he has no recollection of saving her that day, but he made a lasting impression on Margie.

"I thought he was cute," she said. "He was a hunk."

But he was also nearly six years older than her and had no interest in an 11-year-old with colt-like legs. Time went on. Margie grew up and had her share of high school admirers, but she always had an eye out for her favorite lifeguard.

The trouble was, a lot of girls had eyes for the handsome Irishman. Finally, one of them, a French girl, got him to propose. Margie could only watch, crushed.

"I was at my girlfriend's wedding, and he was there with his girlfriend; in fact, they were engaged," she said. "But he (later) broke up with her, and he started to date around. I know a lot of girls were after him. A lot."

Now that she was 18, Patrick noticed her, too. They started seeing one another, and things progressed to dating exclusively.

"She was beautiful. Out of all the women I went out with ---- and I went out with a few ---- she was really, really, really good," he said and complimented her family.

Margie likes to joke that he thought she came from money.

Patrick recalled how the two of them were sitting on the beach one day when a little girl came up to ask what he was doing with Elizabeth Taylor. He cautioned her to keep her voice down so as not to start a scene and, in return, he'd get her an autograph.

Margie carries around a photo of the two of them from their early life together.

"You know how I won him?" she said. "I played hard to get. The other girls were too pushy."

They went out for 11 months before getting married. That was in 1962. They raised two sons and will celebrate their 51st anniversary this summer.

COUPLE WEREN'T AWARE THEY'D ALREADY CONNECTED ONLINE

The circumstances behind how Elyse and David Zacharia of Summerlin met can only be described as beshert ---- a Hebrew word meaning bearing the fingerprints of divine intervention.

Elyse was a pharmaceutical representative in Las Vegas in 1999. She and a girlfriend found it funny that a co-worker had turned to online dating to find girls.

"He would travel all over to find dates, and we thought it was hysterical," she said.

To bait him, they put Elyse's profile on a dating site he frequented, disguising her only by using the name "Lisa." The profile did not include her picture.

The co-worker didn't bite, but another man on the site did and emailed her.

"I just ignored it," Elyse said. "I didn't even read it."

She was too busy planning a trip back to Chicago in two days. When she and her mother, Sharon Pressler, got to McCarran International Airport, Elyse said a man at the gate kept staring at her. Her mother joked that he was going to hit on Elyse. The flight was on Southwest Airlines, which allows passengers to choose their seats. Elyse and her mother settled in. The passenger in front of them was the man who'd noticed Elyse.

"I maybe glanced at her a few times, but that was about it ... I wasn't staring. I wasn't a stalker," David said. "She was petite and pretty and had a good body."

Once airborne, he started a conversation and said she looked familiar, and had she gone to the University of Kansas, his alma mater? She hadn't, but David was so charming and humorous and made a point of including her mother, Elyse couldn't help but be intrigued.

"The more I kept telling him of my life, he kept saying, 'And your name is 'Elyse?', and I kept saying, 'Yes,' " she recalled.

They talked and laughed for the entire flight. Elyse focused on how charming and what a good conversationalist he was. David admitted to focusing on other things.

"The conversation was fine, but I was more attracted to her body," he said. "Her eyes and her body and her face. No, it's body first, eyes second ... big, brown eyes, I loved them."

He invited her to a get-together at a singles' event while in Chicago, but she declined. Elyse was there to welcome her newborn niece and visit family. Still, she said she couldn't forget the engaging young man whose business card was sitting in her wallet.

She returned to Las Vegas days later and finally got around to opening the email from the guy at the dating site. As she read his profile, things started sounding familiar ---- he had gone to the University of Kansas; he worked in real estate; he was in Las Vegas for a shopping center convention; he lived in Chicago. She scrolled quickly to the bottom to see his name: David Zacharia.

Elyse whipped out the business card, ensured the names were the same and reached for her phone.

"It was 1:30 (a.m.) in Chicago, and I woke him up," she said. "I said, 'I'm the girl from the plane. You emailed me a week before I met you' ... We talked for, like, three hours that night."

They began a long-distance relationship that included frequent flier miles and daily phone calls.

Was it truly beshert? There's more.

Not long after, Elyse's company eliminated her position. The only option it could offer was a territory out of state. If she took it, she would have to move to Chicago.

She and David were married in 2000. They have two children: a son, 10, and a daughter, 8.

DATING SERVICE STRUCK GOLD FOR COUPLE

Jeff Grace, president and CEO of NetEffect, an information technology company, was a busy man whose first marriage had ended eight years before.

"I was kind of frustrated," he said. "I was 40 years old and really wanted to be happily married and have children."

But time was running out, so he turned to dating services.

Two years and too many dates went by before he hooked up with It's Just Lunch, a dating service that matches busy professionals. By the time December 2006 came around, he was still looking for the right woman.

About then, Dina, his future wife, turned to the same service. Her first "date" was with Jeff.

The moment Dina walked in the door, Jeff said his interest was piqued. Then they started talking.

"We hit it off immediately," he said. "Dina's very smart, so we connected on that level. She's got a great sense of humor. Within the first five minutes, we were laughing and having a great time. She went back to It's Just Lunch and said, 'Wow. Show me more of those (kind of guys).' "

They discovered they had similar interests, such as appreciating the outdoors and hiking.

Dina said she'd stipulated to It's Just Lunch that she wanted to meet men who were smart and funny, with no kids and who were open-minded and spiritual. Jeff matched up perfectly, so perfectly that they could have spent all afternoon talking. But It's Just Lunch has rules.

"They (require) a time limit, that your first date last no longer than 30 minutes," she said. "I was kind of sad at that time limit. I could have talked to him a lot longer than that ... our conversation just flowed."

A couple of weeks later, on New Year's Day, they had their first real date, taking to the trails of Red Rock Canyon. When Jeff's nieces and nephews were in town, he watched Dina's natural interaction with them. By February, they decided to date exclusively.

Dating, for them, was grabbing takeout Thai food and sitting and talking.

They were married in August 2008. Their daughter, Bailey, was born in August 2010. Son Haiden arrived in August 2012. He and Bailey share the same birthday.

Dina said meeting her husband on her first matchup was perfect because he was the cream of the crop.

"He had to kiss a lot of frogs," Dina said. "I got lucky. I only had to kiss one frog."

COUPLE WORKED TOGETHER BEFORE WOULD-BE WIFE PURSUED A DATE

Tim and Sharry Quillin, owners of Q Advertising, an advertising and public relations company, met about 20 years ago while working on the re-election campaign for Nancy Oesterle, a local judge. Sharry was in charge of fundraising, and Tim was in charge of running the campaign.

"The second he walked in that room, it hit me, and I said to myself, 'That will be the man I will marry one day,' " Sharry said. "It was a nanosecond, almost a knee-jerk reaction. It was that fast."

Such a prophetic gut reaction had never happened to her before, she said, but it was so strong, she went home and told her mother that night.

Sharry learned Tim's name and his function but didn't pursue her romantic interest.

"I was a grown woman, a professional," she said. "I was there to do business. ... though, I will tell you, I was extremely looking forward to each committee meeting. When Nancy called those master group meetings where I knew he would be, yeah, I sat a little straighter in my chair when he was in the room."

As for Tim, he said he didn't pay special attention to Sharry, at least not right away.

"Subsequently, I noticed there was this particular woman sitting next to me at every meeting," he said, adding that he thought it was a coincidence. "I was focused on the campaign."

The months flew by until the end of the campaign and the victory party after Oesterle was re-elected.

"I took the first step and had a conversation with him on a personal level," she said. "I was pushy, saying something like, 'Now that the campaign is over, I would like to continue to see you.' He went, 'Oh.' As soon as those words were out, we started getting in touch with one another."

"She was very direct," Tim said. "But by that time I had very much noticed her and wanted to date her. But I'm a shy, retiring individual, and she is a loud 'out there' kind of person, so it wasn't out of character at all that she would bring up the subject of meeting beyond the campaign. .... I would have asked her out. It just would have taken a while."

Two years later, they married. Who presided over their wedding? Oesterle, whose campaign had brought them together.

"We're still over the moon in love," Sharry said.

Contact Summerlin/Summerlin South View reporter Jan Hogan at jhogan@viewnews.com or 702-387-2949.