Star Dater: Margaret Daley!

Please welcome this week's "Dating With the (Literary) Stars" guest blogger, my friend Margaret Daley. Margaret's reputation as a caring and helpful mentor is known in writing circles far and wide.

When Myra asked me to write about dating, it took me a while to come up with what I wanted to write about. My husband and I met by accident (I call it a God thing). I had a date with someone else, but it didn't work out. I was on my way to the ice cream parlor (right off campus in college) to drown my sorrows in a big helping of what I call comfort food. Several of my friends were with me. We ran into my husband bringing a friend’s date back to the dorm to get something (he had a car on campus). We started talking and the rest is history.

But that wasn't the date I wanted to talk about. I wanted to tell about how I became engaged to my husband. We had been talking about getting married when he graduated from college. The Christmas his senior year he came to my hometown to spend some of the vacation time with my family and me. I went to the airport to pick him up. I am not a patience person at certain times. I knew he had picked out a ring for me while he was home for the holidays and was going to formally ask me over Christmas. I wouldn't let him get out of the airport without whipping out that ring and giving it to me right on the spot. I didn't want to wait another second. Of course, he tells everyone he had it all planned about how he was going to take me to a romantic dinner and have me find the ring in something I was eating (a baked potato, I think). I’m kind of glad that didn't happen. Knowing me, I'd have choked on the ring and that would have been the end of the story. Anyway, all is well. Last August we were married thirty-seven years.

With fifty-six books, Margaret Daley is an award winning author of inspirational romances and romantic suspense for Love Inspired and Love Inspired Suspense. When she isn't writing, she is teaching at a local high school and spending precious time with her family and friends. She is involved in Romance Writers of America and American Christian Fiction Writers. Recently she received from ACFW at the national conference the Book of the Year award for short suspense with Hearts on the Line. She has a book out on the stands called Buried Secrets, a Love Inspired Suspense for October 2007. In December she will have her next installment in her Fostered by Love series for Love Inspired called Heart of the Family.

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Thanks so much for sharing your story with us today, Margaret. Come back anytime!

Comments

[Carla]

Great story Margaret. We've only made it to the 35 year mark, but it does seem like a loooonnng time ago when we said "I do." Good men are hard to find. We're blessed.

[Myra]

I agree, Carla! We just celebrated 35 years last May. And it gets kind of scary when I go to doctor's appointments and realize they're younger than my own kids!

[Julie Lessman]

LOL, Margaret--in your case, I guess impatience paid off!! And who knows, if you had chipped a tooth while eating that baked potato, your hubby may have ruined you for spuds forever! Congrats on 37 years--you sure don't look as if you could be that old. Child bride, I guess.

[Pam Hillman]

Loved the story, Margaret. I wouldn't have taken you for an impatient person. lol Maybe you've mellowed a bit since college, huh?

[Margaret Daley]

Pam, Julie, Carla and Myra, thanks for your comments and congratulations on 37 years. My husband is a wonderful guy, and I have mellowed out since college.

Margaret

[Rhonda Gibson]

Congratulations Margaret on your successful marriage and all your wonderful titles!! Rhonda

[Janet Dean]

Loved your story, Margaret! Good thing you were impatient. You might have swallowed your engagement ring.

My son-in-law pretended to capture a spider under a tissue he'd wrapped around our daughter's ring. She's terrified of spiders so he had to talk fast to get her to take a peek.

You gotta love those romantic types! :-)