Wendell age 34 and Diane age 24 met in 1979.  They worked together as Counselor and  Client Service Worker hired the same week as the new guys in a 4 person office in a small town in  IIndiana.

Wendell, his wife Kaann and Diane and her husband Doug became fishing friends. Wendell and Kaann had a daughter Jennifer, then age 9.  Several fishing trips took place though a 3 year time period.  When Doug and Diane had a baby girl in 1980, Kaann and Jennifer opted to stay at home to baby sit while Wendell, Doug and Diane went fishing.

As the years went by, Doug and Diane moved several times.  Christmas cards were sent and phone calls were made.  Some cards were returned due to address unknown. Doug and Diane divorced. However, there always seemed to be a connection between Wendell, Kaann and Diane.

In January, 2010, Diane received a phone call from her sister who lived in the same area as Wendell and Kaann telling Diane, Kaann had passed away from a long term battle with Muscular Dystrophy.  Diane was living 2 hours away and wanted to attend the funeral, but a large ice storm happened and Diane was unable to attend.  However, she sent a sympathy card to Wendell.  She enclosed a fishing picture from 1980 and told him she hoped it would help him when he needed a good laugh.

A couple months later, Diane had a dream and Wendell was in it….not thinking much about it she blew it off.  A couple months went by and May came around.  Diane’s daughter, was graduating from law school in Indianapolis at the end of the month. She decided to leave Ohio where she was currently living, an hour early and stop by to check on Wendell.  She found the house as she had remembered it, kinda, but in a state of disrepair. Diane knocked on the door but no one answered.  A second knock brought Wendell to the door. (He assumed it was the senses taker.)  He had not changed a bit in 27 years….well, let’s say, not much anyway.  It appeared he had not taken a bath or shower in several days.  The house had only a walk thru of a path to get to the bathroom.  Let’s say, checking on Wendell was a BIG deal.  They talked for an hour and he walked her to her car.  As Diane got in the car, Wendell said, “As for this hair, it’s intentional have you ever heard the song Hey Soul Sister by Train? Diane replied, “no”. “Well”, said Wendell, “their lead singer Pat has hair just like this. And I had to work hard to get mine to look like this”. They said their goodbyes and called it a day.

On arriving back home in Ohio, Diane went on the computer and looked up this "Train" group.  The song was pretty good, but his hair was nothing like Pat’s, the lead singer.

Wendell made a call to his daughter now 40 to ask her, “guess who stopped by today”? She asked if this person lived in Indiana?  Wendell said “no”, she said, “then it was Diane. ” (How did she know that?)  After some conversations, Jennifer convinced Wendell he should find a reason to go to Ohio and visit Diane. 

On the Monday following the visit to Indiana, Diane heard on the radio Hey Soul Sister twice.  On Tuesday she heard it twice again.  On Wednesday, the radio station at work got static on the country music station they always listened to at the office. So, Diane changed the station.  The new radio station was giving away free tickets to the “Train” Concert in July to the 9^th caller.  Diane had never called a station before, but, thought this might be fun. Well the first time, she did not get through, but the second time, she won 2 free tickets to see “Train”!  Diane immediately called Wendell and asked him what he was doing on July 27.  They had a good laugh and decided to get together in a couple of weeks. They began seeing each other every weekend.  The concert came and went.  They were the oldest couple there and could not really see due to the drunk teenagers, but they heard their song and left when Train stopped playing for the night.

Hey Soul Sister became their song.  (over and over and over) Wendell proposed to Diane on September 22, 2010.  They were married on April 17, 2011.  The story isn’t over.  The wedding?    The rehersal went great except, the music wasn’t fitting the size of the church.  The girls were coming down the aisle too fast for the short aisle and by the time Diane was to come down, the music key was wrong.  It seemed to the headache of the wedding.   Diane decided to leave it up to the piano player to fix the problem. Well, Diane read in a magazine that it was a nice gesture to send the groom something to his dressing room the day of the wedding.  After the rehersal, Diane took her Train CD to the hotel where she was staying with her daughters.  She would prepare a CD player and headset so the CD would be set to Marry Me  by Train. After replacing the batteries twice in the player, it was decided to forget the idea, the player was broken.  The next day when she arrived at the church to get dressed, she shared her story with the bridesmaids.  It was decided a boom box was to be brought to the church and the CD could be played to Wendell on the boom box.  It was delivered and Diane began to set the Marry Me for delivery. When she began to play it in the dressing room at 12:00 (the wedding was at 12:30) her daughter yelled, “That’s IT, you are coming down the aisle to Marry Me.  Quickly the boom box was delivered to the church and set up.  As Diane entered the church, Marry Me began to play.  Wendell leaned to his best man and said, “I told my friends in Florida two months ago she was coming down the aisle to Marry Me”.  The wedding was a huge success, the pastor used wording from Hey Soul Sister in their vows. A train whistle was blown suggesting that in the future when anyone heard a train whistle they would think of that day and the love Wendell and Diane have for each other.

Wendell and Diane celebrated their first wedding anniversary on April 17, 2012.