1995 Grey Cup Festival kick-started a life together for Saskatchewan-born couple
11/17/2024 05:02 PM
Dean and Lorie Tatlow are the proud owners of Grey Cup rings.
Wedding rings, in their case.
They met at the 1995 Grey Cup Festival in Regina and were married 2½ years later.
"It was like fate or coincidence that puts you in that exact spot at that exact time," Dean marvels.
"It was Thursday, November 16th," Lorie adds.
Three days before a CFL championship game was played in Saskatchewan for the first time, Dean and Lorie just happened to attend the same Festival event.
"I went there with Liz, a friend of mine," Lorie recalls.
"Another friend of mine was on the dance floor and I was waiting for her to come off. Then Dean walked by and I guess I turned my head. My friend Liz noticed me do that, so she stopped him.
"I went wandering over there after I talked to my friend and Liz was still talking to Dean. He introduced himself as Bob."
Hold on … Bob?
"You don't want to give it all away," Dean says with a chuckle.
Early that morning, Bob — er, Dean — had left Calgary and travelled to Regina to take part in the Grey Cup revelry.
"I was living in Calgary at that time and belonged to the Saskatchewan Social Club, Calgary chapter," explains Dean, who was born in Melfort. "We rented a bus to take us all the way back to Regina to whoop 'er up.
"There were people from every part of Saskatchewan — Davidson, Assiniboia, Annaheim, Tisdale — on that bus coming home.
"We kept on going to Regina for the eight hours. By the time I got down to the exhibition grounds, I was pretty much dazed and confused and prone to wandering."
Good thing, too!
"We had a drink together and we were kind of just visiting," Lorie says. "Then he said, 'I'm from Calgary. I'd really like you to meet the friends that I came here with.'
"So we went to the Saskatchewan hospitality room and he introduced me to all the friends that I had from Regina that moved to Calgary. They were his friends in Calgary.
"Dean asked me to go out for supper with him, so I picked him up the next day. They were sort of being billeted on the east side.
"When I picked him up, him and his buddy were staying in this little room in the basement, and I knew his buddy from high school. Everywhere I went with Dean, we knew the same people.
"We went to Luiggi's for supper and visited for a little while. Then I had to drop him off back at the exhibition grounds because I had a flight booked to go to Edmonton the next day to visit a friend."
Dean chuckles at the recollection.
"Who books a flight to Edmonton to leave Grey Cup?" he says. "I guess that was her out."
"He even offered to pay for my flight so I would stay home," Lorie says.
Off she went, though, to the Alberta capital.
"When I was flying back from Edmonton, I had a stop in Calgary, so I had told Dean, 'I'll give you a call because I have a layover in Calgary and we'll see if there's enough time,' " Lorie says.
"As it turned out, our flight leaving was late, so I never even got to call him in Calgary. The poor guy thought he was really stood up. I called him when I got back to Regina.
"Then he invited me to go there for New Year's, so I drove to Calgary with a friend of mine. The day before New Year's Eve, we went to a comedy club with all of our friends.
"Then he took me to the Calgary Tower for a New Year's Eve supper."
That idea, much like the Baltimore Stallions in the 1995 Grey Cup Game, was a winner.
"I had to close the deal," Dean says.
A long-distance relationship continued until May of 1997, when Dean moved to Regina.
"We got married in '98," Lorie says. "We had our son in '99. And we're still here."
Dean worked at IPSCO (now Evraz) for 27 years. Lorie, who was born and raised in Humboldt before moving to Regina, spent 41 years working in IT with the provincial government.
The Tatlows, now retired, are the proud parents of 25-year-old Lex — who, fittingly enough, is in a relationship that has ties to the CFL.
Lex's girlfriend, Julia Vaughan, is a graphic designer with the Saskatchewan Roughriders.
