Why Ree Drummond Almost Didn't Marry Her Husband

Ree Drummond, the Pioneer Woman who hosts a television show of the same name, didn't swipe right to meet the man of her dreams. There wasn't an app for that yet. She didn't meet him in the hallway during high school or at the office, or at church, or at a party, or at a wedding, or through mutual friends — or any of the other ways people commonly meet their significant others (via The Knot). They met at a bar — gasp! — and sparks flew, but they didn't immediately ignite.

How often does it happen that people get a little flirty with someone they strike up a conversation with at a bar? Pretty often, we'd venture. How often does someone share their phone number at a bar, hoping to hear from that someone soon but never hear from them again? Also pretty often, we'd guess.

The Pioneer Woman's history with her husband, Ladd Drummond, goes something like that. First, she almost missed out on meeting Wrangler-wearing, "Marlboro Man” Ladd by skipping a night out with friends at a "dive bar” in her hometown (via Country Living). But Chardonnay called and she went. After spotting Ladd across the room and "talking into the night” with him, she was sure she'd hear from him right away. But a watched phone never seems to ring.

Ree Drummond was disappointed when she didn't hear from her now-husband. But from her perspective, the disconnect wasn't the only roadblock to a possible relationship with Ladd Drummond. She had just graduated from the University of Southern California-Los Angeles, where she studied journalism and gerontology and developed a love for life in the big city. He was a fourth-generation cattle rancher with deep roots in the country. She considered her time home in Oklahoma temporary and was making plans to move to Chicago.

"I continued to tell myself it was a good thing he'd never called,” Drummond wrote on The Pioneer Woman's website. "I didn't need anything derailing my resolve to get back to civilization.”

Four months later, Ladd Drummond finally picked up the phone and called the wannabe city slicker with one foot at home and the other in the Windy City. He asked if he could take her to dinner the next night, picked her up in his Ford F-250, and gave her a kiss goodnight on the front porch of her parents' house (via Country Living).

"I don't know how long we stood there in the first embrace of our lives together,” Drummond wrote on The Pioneer Woman's website. "But I do know that when that kiss was over, my life as I'd always imagined it was over, too. I just didn't know it yet.” Ultimately, their story is sweet, and this is perhaps just one of the things you didn't know about the Pioneer Woman.