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How Steve and Ben Met

October 18, 2023

A Love Story That Began in Oklahoma — 1982

Some stories begin with fireworks.
Others begin with silence.

Ours began in Elk City in 1982.

Back then, Ben was a young police officer working for the Elk City Police Department. He shared a small house with fellow officers Eddie Holland and Lee Rhinehart. Life was simple then — patrol shifts, police radios, late-night calls, and dreams nobody spoke out loud in western Oklahoma.

One evening, Eddie brought someone by the house.

That someone was Steve.

Steve worked in local radio as a disc jockey and news reporter. He had been riding along with Eddie gathering information for the morning news reports. Ben was getting ready for work when the two walked through the front door.

Ben came barreling down the hallway wearing only uniform trousers while digging through a laundry basket looking for his T-shirt.

Not exactly a glamorous Hollywood entrance.

But sometimes love doesn’t arrive with violins.
Sometimes it arrives barefoot, half-dressed, and completely unexpected.

Steve would later admit that something about that moment instantly caught his attention. Ben felt it too, though neither dared acknowledge it. This was Oklahoma in the early 1980s. In those days, people kept certain truths buried deep inside themselves.

No flirtation happened.
No secret signals.
Only a simple introduction.

But fate, as it often does, had other plans.

After that evening, Steve began stopping by the police station during morning shift change to collect reports for his broadcasts. Ben noticed. And before long, he made sure Steve always had the best information waiting for him.

Then came the invitation.

Steve needed to travel to Oklahoma City overnight to pick up his boss’s son after church services. He asked Ben if he wanted to go along.

As luck would have it, Ben’s days off lined up perfectly.

During the drive east across Oklahoma, something changed between them. The conversation came easier. The laughter lasted longer. Somewhere between the highways and radio stations, two lives quietly began turning toward one another.

Before checking into a hotel, they stopped to watch Halloween III: Season of the Witch.

To this day, Ben insists it may have been one of the worst movies ever made.

But there was one problem.

Ben screamed through half of it.

Raised out in the country and not exactly prepared for horror movies on a giant theater screen, he reacted to every jump scare with complete panic. The people seated in front of them kept turning around to stare at the man making all the commotion.

Steve thought it was adorable.

Years later, he admitted that was the moment he fell in love.

That night, they checked into the old Holiday Inn Holidome near Interstate 40 and Meridian. Ben secretly hoped there would only be one bed available.

When Steve returned from the front desk, he slid back into the car and casually said:

“I hope you don’t mind… all they had left were singles.”

Ben tried to hide how happy that made him.

What he didn’t know at the time was that Steve had never asked for a double room in the first place.

Later that evening, the glow from the television filled the room while Joan Rivers filled in for Johnny Carson on The Tonight Show.

The two men awkwardly settled into the same bed.

An elbow bumped somebody.
A laugh escaped.
A tickling match broke out.

And suddenly Steve was sitting on top of Ben laughing while trying to tickle him half to death.

Then came the moment that changed both their lives forever.

Gathering every ounce of courage he had, Ben suddenly leaned upward and kissed Steve directly on the lips.

In that instant, fear disappeared.

And love arrived.

What neither of them fully understood then was that the moment would become the beginning of a connection lasting more than four decades.

Through every road life carried them down… through miles, careers, hardships, laughter, memories, and time itself… they continued finding their way back to one another.

Now, more than 44 years later, Steve and Ben remain together still telling stories, still laughing, and still proving that sometimes the greatest love stories begin in the quietest moments imaginable.

And it all started with a laundry basket in Oklahoma.

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