Love Stories: Gay Waldman and Brent Hoogner

My name is Gay Waldman and my husband is Brent Hoogner, and our 30th wedding anniversary will be March 1, 2021. Happy anniversary sweetie, forever and always!

We both moved here in the mid-’80s after finding new jobs in Spokane. The year we met I was looking into moving to Seattle for another job and Brent was thinking of moving back home to Lincoln, Nebraska. I was at Riverfront Park Ice Palace, where I would meet my friend Scott to practice dance-skating. Scott left early that night and since I was breaking in new skates, I wanted to skate a little longer. Those were the days when you would exit the ice after the emcee announced “couples-skate only, please clear the ice.” I started to leave, but I just wanted to skate one more song. I saw Brent (whom I did not know) seated in the hockey box, I glided over and asked him to skate. He looked behind himself to see if I was really asking him or someone else, I said “Yes, you!” We skated and chatted. He told me he always skated Thursday nights after his umpire-school class.

I made sure to go skating the next Thursday. He was there and I gave him my number written on a napkin and he called me that night. After I cleared up his confusion that I was not dating my skating buddy Scott, we were on the phone until 3 a.m. He asked me to go out the next weekend and I said I was going on a cruise. He thought I was giving him the brush off, so I mailed him a postcard from San Juan, Puerto Rico. After I returned, we went to a movie and then we saw each other almost every day and were engaged within the year.

We planned our May 1991 wedding date for Bloomsday weekend and we were all set with our arrangements until the end of February. Brent received a call that his Naval Reserve medical unit was called to active duty service in the Iraq Gulf War. We could wait a year to marry or get married in five days, before he shipped out. We ended up marrying on that fifth day and went to Silver Mountain for a ski weekend. The ground war ended that week, so he only had to report to Fairchild for a couple weeks.

When we met, I was working as a picture framer in a local gallery and I had launched my art career. I told Brent it was not a hobby and asked him if he was up for that. He said yes and is a trooper, putting up with all my endeavors and challenges. I combined our last names and labeled my home workspace “StuDio WaHoo.” During one of our first Nebraska visits, Brent drove me through the town of Wahoo. Yep, we were meant to be together.

Brent worked then at PAML and now at Sacred Heart Medical Center as a med tech. The studio-frame shop flourishes and he helps me with booth shows, large works, and installations. We skated at the Ice Palace the last day it was open and now we are season-pass skaters at the Ice Ribbon. We are still best friends and love living together in Spokane, gardening, hiking, biking, kayaking, skating, skiing and camping. Our most rewarding accomplishment is our beautiful daughter, Natalie, who is a Lewis and Clark High School and Washington State University alumnus working as a compassionate speech-language pathologist at Mary Bridge Children’s outpatient clinic in Gig Harbor. I am glad, grateful, overjoyed I skated one more song.