It was halftime of the Northwest College men’s basketball game against Miles Community College, and Gary Kerby was nervous.

Not because of the play of the Trappers; the home team was knocking around the Pioneers pretty good at that point, holding a comfortable 42-27 lead at the break.

No, Gary was nervous for an entirely different reason. After all, how often do you propose to the love of your life, especially in front of a gym full of basketball fans?

“I had run out of days (to propose),” Gary chuckled. “I had made plans a couple of times to propose previous, and that didn’t work out too good. All of a sudden, sitting at the basketball game, I thought ‘You know what? If I don’t do it right now, I’m not going to do it.’”

Gary’s betrothed, Sandy Greco, works as a facilities assistant at Northwest College, a position she’s held for 17 years. It was in this capacity that Gary hatched his plan for a memorable proposal.

But more on that later.

Finding ‘The One’

Sandy and Gary met as many couples do in the digital age, through an online dating website. Though Gary, an artist and sculpter based out of Wilsall, Montana, and Sandy were separated by about three hours and a state line, they found they had a lot in common. They both enjoy hunting, fishing, going on hikes and music.

“We met on FarmersOnly.com, and I used to drive Gary nuts because when people would ask how we met, I would sing the jingle,” Greco said, laughing.

The couple also bonded over a love of art, Gary’s in particular.

“She’s been kind of my inspiration,” Gary said. “That maybe there is someone out there for me that would make me happy. And she’s been very encouraging in my art. I’m not going to quit, and she won’t let me.”

The two talked online and on the phone for about two weeks before meeting face to face for the first time. They’ve now been dating for about a year and a half, though distance isn’t as much of a problem as one might think.

“We get together as much as we can,” Sandy said. “Sometimes we’ve gone as long as two months, but we keep in contact daily on the phone.”

Mornings are spent serenading each other on the phone to “Oh, What a Beautiful Morning,” sending each other out into the day with a smile.

“We sing that together every day,” she said. “We start out positive. That was one of my biggest attractions to him was the fact that he was so positive.”

They also sing to each other at night, whether in person or on the phone, committed to never going to bed angry.

“We always try to start our day with a smile and end our day with a smile,” Gary said. “That’s one of the things I love about her. Once in a while we forget things like that, you get wrapped up in life and forget about the important things. That’s our way of staying connected.”

They both admitted they weren’t having the best of luck on the dating site before Sandy came across Gary’s profile and decided to drop him a line. Gary, however, did have a stipulation in his profile that could have ended the courtship before it began.

“He’s going to kill me for sharing this, but I don’t care,” she said. “But in his profile, he stated he wouldn’t go out with an older woman. Well, I’m five years older than him, so I contacted him and said ‘What is wrong with dating an older woman?’ And after we met, he told me I have more youth and energy than any of the other girls he had been in contact with.”

Greco is proud to be 60, and said attitude and keeping active are the keys to a happy, healthy lifestyle and maintaining a youthful exuberance.

“That’s another thing I liked about Gary, he’s very active,” she said. “We feed off each other’s positivity. Negativity will ruin your whole day. I don’t even let my kids at the school be negative. I say good morning to every one of my students. They’re not going to get away with being negative.”

The Proposal

The afternoon of Jan. 21 found Sandy working Cabre Gym, running brooms over the basketball court between the men and women’s games, as well as during halftime. Gary was in town to spend the weekend; he had already decided to ask Sandy to marry him, he just wasn’t sure when.

Previous plans to do so had been thwarted by one thing or another, and as he sat at the game with the ring burning a hole in his pocket, he came up with an idea. With Sandy attending to the floors, Gary snuck up to the public address announcer’s booth and outlined his plan.

“When she went to go get the brooms, I just followed her down the front of the stands,” he recalled. “I took a right-hand turn and went up to talk to the P.A. guy, and he said, ‘Yup, I’ll do it,’ and he did a play-by-play and I sure appreciated it.”

Once the announcer began his pitch, however, Gary said things became a little, well, difficult to recall.

“I sat there behind the scorer’s table for her to show up, and after the announcer started talking, I went completely blank. I didn’t hear a darn thing he said. But he must have done a good job though, because she accepted.”

Sandy remembers wondering why Gary had moved his seat from one end of the arena to the other, still having no clue what was about to happen.

“I’m doing the floors, and all of a sudden I hear Bruce (the P.A. announcer) talking about me over the P.A. system,” Sandy said. “I found that odd that he would be talking about me, even though we had gone to high school together, so I’m thinking ‘Whaaaaat?’ And he said ‘There is a gentleman here who has a question to ask you.’ And I kept saying ‘Oh, my gosh!’ as Gary got down on one knee and proposed.”

Proposals in public places have become more and more common over the years, though in this era of YouTube and Instagram, examples of this approach going shockingly (and at times hilariously) bad are just a mouse-click away. Did Gary at any time before the proposal wonder if he would be the next social media casualty?

“I knew that she’d say yes, but the timing had never been right,” Gary said. “But I’m actually glad those other times didn’t work out, because they weren’t as good as this one. Besides, no one in Powell knows who I am. If I mess it up, I don’t walk away in shame. Nobody’s ever going to know. But I knew she’d say yes. I’ve known for a long time that she is the one.”

Sandy laughingly agreed.

“There were so many people who congratulated us, people who I didn’t even know,” Sandy said, relishing the memory. “My girls were all yelling and clapping, and it was just a really special moment. I looked at Gary and (said), ‘Yep, you got me; you got me good.’”

The couple has set June 3 as their wedding date, with festivities to be held in Wilsall, either at Veteran’s Park or a local ranch.

Asked how she knew she had chosen a keeper, Sandy said it was simple.

“He said he liked my smile,” she said.