When I met Arizona, she was 65 and I was only 22. I actually meet coy couples wanting to get married with the same age difference once in a while.

Growing up in Northwest Indiana, we watched The Cubs on Chicago television. The TV station ran commercials during the games for land sales in Toltec, Arizona; I imagine because The Cubs had been in The Cactus League since about 1952.

Toltec was described as the epicenter of the giant metropolis that would some day combine Phoenix with Tucson. It hasn't happened yet, but the region may someday accommodate Decades, a world-class chronological music-themed amusement park.

In any case, the beautifully filmed TV commercials of Arizona's rugged beauty planted a seed in my mind. They showed the Grand Canyon, Sedona, Tucson, Avondale and Picacho Peak painted in her glorious spring flowers (although we only had a black and white TV). However, Toltec never quite took off.

On a cold 1977 winter's night I had just finished working a visitation at the Illinois funeral home in which I lived and was working my way through Bible College. The funeral home was on a huge corner with 1000 feet of sidewalks, so I shoveled and swept snow nearly every waking/snowing hour.

Thoroughly exhausted that night, I prayed, "Lord, I will serve you and be a minister if you'll find a church for me where it does not snow." 

In two weeks I was offered an Associate Minister position on Lincoln Drive in Phoenix, by Harpist David Ice's father (Chairman of the church board). Mr. Ice asked me how much money I wanted. I asked for $400 per month. He shook his head and said they could not pay that amount, but would I consider taking $650?

Professionally officiating weddings started when the Arizona Biltmore asked me to

perform a destination wedding for an out-of-town couple. Pleased with my ceremony,  the hotel asked me to print some "Arizona Ministers" business cards for them.

Weddings have taken me on nearly a one-million mile drive through this "last of the 48" to join the continental United States. 

Celebrating the most important day of their lives, more than 10,000 couples have asked me to join them at the Grand Canyon, on top of The Praying Monk, the side of Meteor Crater and on the edge of cliffs on Schenbly Hill.

Weddings have been at homes, parks, resorts, in trains, in a limo on South Mountain

on a rainy night, and in a jet circling the San Francisco Peaks at 20,000 feet on 02-02-02.

Weddings have taken place at Chase Field, Firebird Raceway, Taco Bell, Barrett-Jackson, The Phoenix Open, Geordie Hormel's and on top of what was once The Valley National Bank. There have been four to 38,000 people in attendance at all these weddings.

I've married celebrities and under-celebrated people. The one thing they all had in common was their love for each other and their love for Arizona.

Valentine's Day 2012: Arizona turns 100. I have loved her for 35 years.