BELMONT, Wis. — When 16-year-old Mary McNutt’s brother and sister-in-law took her to a local dairy dance, she never imagined where the evening would take her. “My mother had broken her hip and was in the hospital, so they asked me to come with them,” she said.
“It was June 30, 1962.” Mary was sitting on some bleachers watching couples on the dance floor when she sensed someone behind her. “I kept turning around and there were these two guys sitting a couple of bleachers up from me,” she said.
“Finally, one of them came down and asked me to dance.” Owen Demo, who grew up on a farm in Garnavillo, Iowa, was 23 years old and working as a soil scientist for the U.S.
Department of Agriculture’s Soil Conservation Service (now the Natural Resources Conservation Service). “We danced a few times, and then he asked if he could take me home,” the now-Mary Demo said. Owen thought he had enjoyed a nice evening with a college girl.
“I asked her when we were dancing how old she was,” he said. “She said something like, ‘I’m a junior,’ so I thought junior in college.” Owen soon figured out that Mary was a high school junior, not a college student.
But it didn’t matter to him. “When I first met her, I told my buddy ‘I’ve met the love of my life. This is who I’m going to marry,’” he said.
“I just knew.” Owen proposed over a lobster dinner on Christmas Eve in 1965. “Five dollars for a lobster dinner,” he said.
“Can you believe it?”.