Hurdles fail to hinder north valley sweethearts

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.

TWO-MOM HOUSEHOLD

Dina Proto and Dina “Dom” Poist-Proto are better known as 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 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. 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?’ ” Dom said. “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, which 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, which was another challenge in itself.

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.”

‘A LIVELY RELATIONSHIP’

It was love at first sight when Maryann McGee was introduced to her husband Keith by a co-worker at her parents’ A&W restaurant in Gillette, Wyo. He was 16, and she was 15.

“He was a good-looking cowboy,” Maryann said. “He wore tailored shirts and was built nice. I liked him. I was a city girl, so this was kind of fun.”

After being married for 48 years, Keith agreed there was something about Maryann that caught his attention that day.

“Why did I go out with her? She was a girl. What else is driving a teenage boy? You’re not looking down the road when you do that,” Keith said. “It must’ve been love at first sight because I stuck with her.”

On June 6, 1966, the couple eloped and spent their honeymoon at Yellowstone National Park and driving around Wyoming before the Navy shipped Keith to Vietnam.

Two children and a grandson later, the couple’s lives changed in 2004 when Maryann received a call at work from a doctor in Salt Lake City.

Keith was driving on a cross-country road trip to attend his father’s funeral when he crashed into a guardrail.

“They blamed it on the wind,” Keith said. “I lost 33 units of blood. I had a collapsed lung, 27 broken bones, and I was on a ventilator. The doctor said he didn’t expect me to survive.”

At the time, the couple were living in San Dimas, Calif., and Maryann raced to find the quickest flight to Salt Lake City, where Keith was being treated.

It took him five months to be released from the hospital. In that time, Maryann would work for two weeks and then spend two weeks in Salt Lake City.

“I lost a lot of weight and earned a free trip on Southwest Airlines,” Maryann said. “I was really stressed.”

As a token of appreciation, Keith let Maryann drag him, wheelchair and all, to “Thunder From Down Under,” the Las Vegas male revue show, before heading home.

They moved to Las Vegas in 2011 and now spend their time boating and traveling across the country.

After almost 50 years of living together, the couple have learned how handle each other’s quirks and differences.

Keith is the money man and planner, while Maryann admits to being the romantic and more emotional one.

“We are a classic case of ‘opposites that attract,’ ” Maryann said. “I was a city girl, and he was a country guy. He had a reputation for being wild back then, and I was the good little Catholic girl. It makes for a lively relationship — never boring.”

Contact North View reporter Sandy Lopez at slopez@viewnews.com or 702-383-4686. Find her on Twitter: @JournalismSandy.