B105 Soul2Soul Stories: Amy and Tanner

Name: Amy Shumacher and Tanner Blaschka

Story: I can't help but laugh every time someone asks me how Tanner and I met… When I heard about this contest on the radio I couldn’t help but enter Tanner and I’s love story into this contest. It’s a long story, but also a good one! Summer of 2013 my two best friends and I packed up my car with our suitcases filled with festive American flag gear, a large cooler filled with "water", some sleeping bags, a tent, and enough food to make it through the weekend alive, as we were about to head to Cadott, WI to attend our second adventure at Country Fest! We were looking forward to fun in the sun, country music, and a girl’s weekend we would never forget. And let me tell you… This is a country fest for the books and one that was not forgotten. Us girls get to country fest and attempt to set up our campsite only to be found destroyed the next day by our lovely Country Fest neighbors that we were so fortunate to stay right next to. We woke up the next morning after day 1 of country fest to our campsite and our neighbor’s campsite totally destroyed. I’m talking poles from our tent broken, our grill flipped upside down, our knifes stuck in the ground, and our granola bars thrown everywhere with one of neighbors sleeping in a hammock outside wrapped up in a Canadian flag. Little did I know that the man who had slept in the bed of a truck snuggle fire wood all night would be the man I now get today get to call mine. Our country fest neighbors were a group of about 10 college boys who are now great friends of mine. I remember sitting in a lawn chair with my two friends wondering who in the world destroyed our campsite! Minutes later a very cute boy crawled out of the bed of a truck in a panic saying that he woke up to “Charlotte” the spider crawling on him. I remember looking to my friend Olivia and saying “He is cute”. Once out of the truck this man introduced himself as Tanner and sat down next to us and sparked up a conversation. To this day we both still laugh at one another saying it was love at first sight as we started to talk about our childhood days of eating chap stick and play-doh… I kid you not I told this cute boy that I ate chapstick when I was little… WHY AMY? After me sharing that rather embarrassing fact about my younger days he continued on to tell me he used to eat play-doh… The playing field was now even. As the weekend went on Tanner and I then became inseparable… Instead of a girl’s weekend at country fest it then turned into an Amy and Tanner weekend at country fest. I had the biggest crush on this boy at the end of the weekend and saying goodbye was hard because I didn’t know if I was going to see this boy ever again. On my drive back home to Duluth, Tanner had texted me and thanked me for a wonderful weekend. We began texting every day and calling each other every night. We then had planned to meet up and spend a weekend together. Tanner at the time was going to school in Madison, WI. A couple of weeks later I had taken a trip to visit Tanner for the weekend, and during that time he had asked me to be his girlfriend. Of course I said yes but wondered how the relationship was going to work due to the distance of me living in Grand Forks, ND and him living in Madison, WI… But we made it work and I knew that Tanner loved me when he drove 12 hours to see me in North Dakota to go to a Florida Georgia Line concert together. Now we are both graduated, live in Duluth together, and talk about getting married and having children together. Who would have thought that I would have met the man of my dreams, the man I want to marry at country fest 3+ years ago. We go to country fest every year together now with this past summer being out 4th country fest together. And the best thing about it all is that our love for country music had brought us together and is something that conti nues to help us grow stronger as the years go on. So thank you country fest and country music for guiding me to meet the love of my life :)