Everyone loves the romantic movies where the love-struck high school teens carve their initials into a tree at their local park, signifying their love will forever grow and leave a mark on this world. Sometimes bark grows over and the two fade away, only thinking back to the love they shared in brief moments. However, the love story that has become of Carli Young and Tanner Gilchrist seems to have become ethereal.
The two met at Tanners twelfth birthday—Carli only attended because her father had been friends with Tanner’s father. With a fleeting twelve-year-old mind, Carli couldn’t have picked Tanner out from anyone. But as the party progressed and a group of children crowed around Buffo The Clown, Carli found that her fear of clowns overpowered childhood curiosity and kept her to the outskirts of the group.
When the dreaded clown called Tanner’s name, Carli felt the cliché “love at first sight” moment and has been hooked ever since.
“You don’t want to just be another girl in the lineup,” Carli’s mom would say. “If this is how you really feel, it’ll be worth the wait.”
And so she waited for Tanner to go through what felt like 100 dates, but he finally asked. Tanner officially asked Carli to be his girlfriend on October 19, 2007. They were 14 and in the backyard of one of their friend’s houses. Since then, the two of them have been together.
Flash forward to September 7, 2018. Tanner was away for work, and Carli was home with the dog. She said she heard a loud bang, thought she was imagining things and went back to sleep. Then she heard another louder bang and thought someone was trying to break into the house, but the dog apparently didn’t have a care in the world. She noticed the power was out in her room but as she went into the hall, she said the power was still on downstairs. There was no smoke, no smell, no nothing. She took a couple of steps downstairs, nothing looked out of the ordinary. Young walked back upstairs and noticed sounds coming from the attic door.
“Some instinct told me the house was on fire. I grabbed the dog, grabbed my purse and ran out the door while calling 911,” Young recalled. “I watched the fire spread across the attic and come higher and higher through the roof while standing in my pajamas in the rain from across the street.”
Young couldn’t get a hold of her dad or Tanner, cried at the thought of having to call Tanners parents. Neighbor Mike Nocera ran from his house to be with her. Kim Deloia came to help with the dog, Pastor Tod was there for support and to help the fire department.
There was one amazing moment though. The first firefighter that came out of the house that Carli was able to talk to was wearing the red, Young’s, ALS shirt that she made for her mom. He had it on backwards and she pointed it out to him. He apologized and said he just threw something on quickly when he got the fire call.
“I told him not to worry and that I was so thankful because the first thing I saw was my mother’s name, our ice cream cone, and the big ALS ribbon. It instantly brought a tear to my eyes,” Young said. “It was a sign I needed at that moment that my mother was with me. It had been a year from hell with the caring of my mom’s disease and then her passing, my sister’s motorcycle crash, my dad’s quick trip to the ER, and the normal stresses of running a business.”
A house fire on Young’s closing weekend was not on the couple’s agenda! They had so much support and care with her mom and that many more came together to help the young couple too. People offered their homes, their time, their money, their couches, beds, refrigerators, pots and pans, and everything in between.
However, Tanner wanted to make sure 2018 didn’t end as a complete flop.
On the day of the proposal, Tanner apparently couldn’t keep a straight facade. He asked about things such as about when she was getting her nails done (when normally he apparently could careless), he had a very exact time frame of the day (he’s literally late to everything), and Carli said she found him outside pacing her truck before they left. A photographer friend of theirs had “just so happened to also be out” in the exact same woods as them, taking photos of a woman and her dog. However, the biggest hint was they were taking the dog for a walk at Hell’s Hollow.
“He gave it away in more ways than one!” said Young.
The couple carved their initials in a tree there so many years ago, and Carli had assumed he was just taking her back there for memories sake. When the couple arrived, she soon realized their tree had been taken down during a landslide. Clearly distraught, Tanner sat her down on a bench and said that they’d “just have to carve a new one with her new initials.” When she looked at the tree in front of them, their initials were carved in it. Tanner then got on one knee and she said yes.
“I felt like I waited a million years to say that to him! We were both thrilled,” Young said. “Tanner was probably more relieved than anything – like he really thought I’d say no after all this time!”
After the couple finished their little tree ceremony, Tanner had one more surprise up his sleeve. Unbeknownst to Carli, family and friends were secretly gathered at Blocher’s to celebrate the engagement. Tanner told Carli that Mary DiCaprio, owner of Blocher’s wanted to make sure the ring fit. When they got to the door, surprise! There was a crowd to congratulate the couple.
Carli and Tanner plan on getting hitched on October, 19 of this year. Carli said that while she did some wedding planning prior to the engagement, she finished planning more than half of it within two months of being engaged. She believes the trick was her infinite amount of support and her clear vision of what she wants. In attendance among friends will be Tanners parents, Tim and Patricia (Trish) Gilchrist along with Carli’s father Paul (Rusty) Young, with her late mother Barb Young there in everyone’s hearts. Carli’s mother had passed away in April of 2018. The ceremony will highlight a special reading by Carli’s 97-year-old aunt, Jenny Calve.
“A wedding comes fast when you work a full-time job, run a business, you’re the maid of honor in one of your bridesmaid’s weddings, and one of your other bridesmaids is the maid of honor in another wedding,” Carli said.
The couple couldn’t think of a better way to celebrate their 2019 anniversary than with a wedding. Not only will it mark 12 years of officially dating, but it will become their wedding anniversary as well.
“We’re pretty excited about the fact that we only have to remember one day for forever, too,” Carli said.
Beautiful story of a beautiful couple…May their happiness last forever….