For Cheryl and Barry, the road to love was winding.
Being a conservative horse lover who enjoys the outdoors and country life, Cheryl was drawn to FarmersOnly. She had tried other dating sites, but had no luck finding what she was looking for.
“I was an older widow living in a small town in Mississippi and that made meeting people my age extra difficult,” she shares.
Barry was on another dating site when an ad for FarmersOnly came on TV. His granddaughter said, “Look there, Grandpa! You need to get on that so you can find you a country girl - one that likes dogs and horses and won’t just take all your money.”
The two weren’t matched to each other’s profiles, but Cheryl ended up coming across a photo of Barry holding a big buck by the horns. Being someone who loves to hunt, she felt compelled to send him a simple note - “Nice buck.”
He confessed that it was his nephew’s buck that he was posing with, and from there the conversation just kept flowing. They discovered that they had quite a bit in common, including the shared life experience of having kids and being widowed.
After several months of chatting online, Barry told her he was part owner of a horse RV park and some trails in the Ozarks, and invited her to spend a weekend camping and riding the trails.
Cheryl brought her daughter and her daughter’s friend and they set off for a fun weekend to meet Barry for the first time.
Meeting Barry in person confirmed that he was easy for her to talk with, and that there was some attraction between the two. Living in different states was an obstacle, but Cheryl left that weekend hoping to continue getting to know him.
One day Barry let Cheryl know that their correspondence was coming to an end because he had started seriously dating a woman local to his area, and he felt it would be wrong to continue to talk to someone else as well. She was sad, but admired his honesty and integrity.
Six months later, Barry checked in with her to see how she was doing. The woman he had been dating dumped him and had left him brokenhearted. Cheryl says, “I can’t explain this to anyone, but I felt moved as his friend to comfort him. I offered to come up the next weekend and visit him.”
That weekend she listened to him talk about how he fell in love and got his heart broken.
“I think I fell in love with him as he poured out his heart about how love should be and how incredible a relationship would be with two people if they just loved each other no matter what,” Cheryl explains. “When I left that weekend I knew I loved him.”
It took Barry a little longer to get on the same page, however.
Over the next several months, Barry would share that she was his type of woman - loves to hunt, fish, camp, ride horses, and most importantly loves the Lord - but the issue of living in different states continued to get in the way.
Once they finally both decided to be together and make it work, it was only four months until they were married.
Barry traveled from Arkansas to North Carolina just to meet Cheryl’s 82-year-old mother and ask for her blessing.
Their wedding was western themed and was held in his cabin in the Ozarks with only close friends and family in attendance.
During the first six months of their marriage Cheryl had to live in Mississippi to wind down her business before she could make the move up to the Ozarks, but they made sure to spend every weekend together.
“I have never been happier and we are both so much in love,” Cheryl gushes. “We have issues that come up sometimes, but we always say that as long as we continue to love, everything will work out. And it always does!”
Her advice to anyone considering meeting someone online is to consider the kind of life you want to live, and be honest with who you are. “If country living is [your] desire, FarmersOnly is the only way to go!”