Once upon a time ...

Fate is a strange thing. Had Walt Disney not lost the rights to his Oswald the Lucky Rabbit character, Mickey Mouse would never have been born. And had The Jazz Singer not changed the face of movies with the introduction of sound to film, perhaps Mickey Mouse would have been just another cartoon character, on par with Felix the Cat or Oswald. But Fate saw to it that Mickey was born, as legend has it, on the train trip back from New York after Walt lost the Rabbit to Universal. And Fate allowed Steamboat Willie to be produced with fully synchronized sound, giving Mickey instant recognition and star status. It was these events, plus all of the events in our lives, that led to our meeting at The Disney Store in 1991, setting the stage for all of our dreams to come true.

They meet ...

Looking back at the chain of events that led up to their meeting, it is a truly happy miracle that Kathy and Matthew are together today. Matthew had just returned from a day at Disneyland the weekend following his graduation from high school when he got a message from his Uncle Joe on his answering machine at home saying that The Disney Store wanted to set up an interview with him for a job. And though he had talked about working at the store, the message of an interview came as a surprise to Matthew since he had done nothing to prompt such an invite. It seems that his Aunt Sue had decided to fill out an interest card for him when she was at the store and that set the ball in motion. Having been a huge Disney fan all his life and wanting to work for Disney, Matthew happily jumped at the chance. Needless to say, he got the job and started in July 1991.

Kathy, on the other hand, already had a job as a cashier at a home improvement store. She had gone to a job fair where she had put in an interest card with The Disney Store but she didn't hear back from them so she took this other job. Months later, the store called her for an interview. Her mom told her that she should go interview despite having the other job, so she did. She was hired and started about a month after Matthew.

At first, Kathy didn't think that Matthew liked her. He has a tendency to play practical jokes on people and Kathy became a target on a number of occasions. Those jokes led to some harmless flirting and eventually the two became friends. The two of them opened together one Saturday and Matthew was telling Kathy about having gone to see a taping of the TV show Perfect Strangers the night before. As fate would have it, Kathy was going to a TV taping of a show called Knights and Warriors that night as a fundraiser for her sister's basketball team and they needed more people in order to get the money. She asked if Matthew would like to go and he said yes. The show, a rip-off of American Gladiators, was pretty bad. But Kathy and Matthew had a good time together and they began to see each other more and more outside of the store.

Disney continued to play a part in their relationship. The first movie that they saw together was Beauty and the Beast. And a month later, at a Christmas party for employees of The Disney Store, that movie's theme song became the first song that they danced to. Ever since, Kathy has always been Matthew's beauty and princess.

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