CENTRE COUNTY — In a day and age where online dating is the norm, Centre County sweethearts Michel and Crystal Lee Garret are a success story.
Michel, a board member for Centre LGBT+ and assistant director and integration lead at Penn State, met her wife Crystal on OkCupid where the dating site not only brought them together but also led to the creation of their blended family.
Crystal’s friends had encouraged the then-single mother to give OkCupid. And, after much thought, Crystal created the profile that would lead her to find her wife.
However, Crystal had a few rules in place when it came to creating her profile. Her profile featured a picture of herself in a dragon onesie holding hedge clippers with candy tapped on them. She made a rule that she would not talk to anyone unless they acknowledged that specific photograph.
“I messaged her, and my opening line was, and I quote, ‘The world would be a better place if more people had pictures of themselves in dragon onesies on their dating profiles.’ And I was in,” Michel shared.
After messaging for about a week, the pair set a day for their first date. But as the date got closer, Michel got sick. When she tried to cancel the date, Crystal put her foot down.
“My time is too precious to me. It’s not happening,” Crystal shared, telling Michel, “If you’re really sick, you can come over and I will make you chicken noodle soup.”
Michel agreed to come over at 6 p.m. But Crystal didn’t get off work until 5 p.m. and wouldn’t have time to make chicken noodle soup. So, Crystal called for reinforcements.
Her friend swung by the Waffle Shop to pick up soup for her, putting it in a crock pot for Crystal and making up a quick salad for the pair.
The rest was history.
The couple’s first date lasted so long that Crystal’s children were dropped back off at her house during the date.
“We were cuddling on the couch watching TV, and the front door opens,” Michel said. “And that’s how I got to meet the kids and the ex-husband on our first date.”
During the pandemic, Crystal and Michel moved in together and started to blend their families. According to the couple, the time together gave Michel the opportunity to process her identity with the help and encouragement of Crystal.
“One day, she said to me that she would still love me, even if I decided I wanted to live as a woman,” Michel said. “She saw right through me.”
Shortly after, the pair got engaged.
For the proposal, Crystal incorporated components of their lives to ask the question.
Michel, who is an author, would have Crystal read all her pieces first. But for the proposal, Crystal reversed the script and brought Michel a story she wanted her to read.
The story Crystal shared told the tale of a queen who was looking for a poet. In the story, the queen found a poet and fell in love — though the queen had a few rules for herself on her journey.
“I realized partway through reading the story that she had set up her phone covertly and was recording the whole thing,” Michel recalled.
At the end of the story, there was a poem written by the poet’s character. But it wasn’t just any old poem, Crystal had used one of Michel’s original poems, though she had added a stanza at the end where the poet, or Michel, proposed to the queen, Crystal.
“Her proposal was her proposing to me through me proposing to her, through her proposing to me, through me proposing to her,” Michel said.
The couple then got married where they get to live out their own happily ever after.
Valentine’s Day is not a symbol of their love just on a single day of the year, but that is because, as they noted, they prefer to celebrate their love every day.
