Anchorage Daily News

When Julie Tisdale looks back on the day John Papasavas proposed, what she remembers most was being bored for quite a long time.

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"We'd spent a really nice, long weekend with his parents in Phoenix," she says, "and it was the last day, and we were at the football game."

Julie is a big hockey fan and loves baseball, especially her Boston Red Sox. But football? Pretty much Yawn City.

John was much happier to be watching the NFL game that day. "It was the Phoenix Cardinals against the 49ers," he says. They were there with John's family -- rabid 49ers fans all -- "and there was lots of scoring, OT, you name it," John says.

"I was hootin' and hollerin' the whole time," he says, enjoying the good-natured banter with a group of 49ers fans on one side of them and a group of Cardinals fans on the other. "I was hollerin' 'We need more beer!' the whole time."

Julie, meanwhile, had enjoyed going to a hockey game and a concert on the previous two nights, but now she just was just ready to go home. She'd thought John might pop the question that weekend, but he hadn't, and things were winding down.

"I was kinda looking at the scoreboard in the third period --"

"Quarter."

"-- the third quarter, and they were putting up people's birthdays, especially kids, and I thought that was cute."

Suddenly John was saying, "Look, there's your name on the scoreboard."

Sure enough: "JULIE TISDALE: Will you marry John Papasavas? I love you."

She turned and saw John was beside her on one knee, and she suddenly forgot she was bored.

"People were going crazy around us. My stepmother was crying," John says. A little later in the game, a guy leaned over and asked John what all the commotion was about in the third quarter.

"I told him I'd asked my girlfriend to marry me," he says, "and the guy smiled and said, 'That was the best play of the game.' "

The couple, who will marry May 31, "met" at their 20-year high school reunion; both graduated from Dimond High in 1987.

"We knew each other but just in passing," Julie says. "I remembered him because he was a tall guy. She noticed him again at the 10-year reunion, "and I thought, 'Oh, that guy's cute.' "

But she was dating someone else then.

But the 20-year reunion was different.

In the intervening years, both had been engaged to others but didn't marry.

"You're in your 30s, and you just think it's time to be married and having kids," Julie says. "But then you realize that you need to be more committed to the other person than that. ...

"Before I met John, I'd been thinking, 'Well, I'm 38, I'll never be married, never have kids."

John, who will be 40 this year, remembers thinking in a similar vein last year.

"I decided I owed it to myself to create a good life for myself, and if marriage doesn't happen, well, it doesn't happen."

Julie says their relationship was worth the wait.

"We both had friends that got married early and divorced," she says. "You see that, and you get cautious. Now I feel like I'm getting married when I'm really sure."

But it wasn't exactly love at first sight at the 20-year reunion.

"I went up to him that Friday and talked to him a little, and he was kind of stuck up," she says, laughing. "He just wasn't very friendly."

He remembers it a little differently. "It was just that I was saying hello to about 50 people at once then," he says, "and ..."

Still, Saturday, "I thought about him all day. I thought he was really handsome but probably a real jerk like every other guy I dated."

But she sought him out again "and he was much nicer. We hung out, we danced. And we hung out the next day. And the next."

John is grinning at this point in the story.

"I guess I'm lucky she didn't act on her first impression," he says.

John brought football into Julie's life. What did she bring into his?

"Two 80-pound Rottweilers," he says. "One trying to lick me to death, and one trying to bite my leg off."

Julie concedes that her male dog is very protective of her.

One day, John says, "we were planning a kayak trip, and I was standing in front of Julie showing her the rowing motion." John, a big man, raises his arms and fists and starts working the air vigorously in front of him.

"And then -- WHAM! -- that dog had chomped down on my forearm."

"Other guys I dated didn't like the dogs, and that was a problem," Julie says "But John loves them, and now they really love him too."

True, John says, but he knows there are rules for the male human and the male dog in the relationship.

"Even now, if I go over and hug Julie," John says, "that dog is paying very close attention."

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