Amanda Vaughn
Northern News Services
Wednesday, August 1, 2007

YELLOWKNIFE - If you believe the movies, airports are places where dramatic things happen: tearful goodbyes, epic re-unions and last-minute confessions of love.

Excited to be a family, Greg Long, left, with his new fiancee Teresa Clark, right, and her daughter Racheal Clark, middle, relax at a friend's house after their busy morning. - Amanda Vaughan/NNSL photo

The Yellowknife airport had its own little bit of drama Sunday morning when Greg Long asked Teresa Clark to be his wife shortly after she and her six-year-old daughter Racheal stepped off a plane from Edmonton.

"The whole thing was a complete surprise," said Clark, "I did not expect it, Greg is very shy."

Clark's childhood friend, Carol Carlson, had helped Long to orchestrate the event, and was there with her mother, Sharon Lambert, to immortalize the event in pictures and stories.

"Both of them were blushing, it was adorable," said Carlson.

She isn't new to the role of cupid, and had actually set the couple up in May, ironically while Clark was in town for a funeral.

According to Clark, it wasn't the first time Carlson has played matchmaker for her, but the results hadn't always been love at first sight.

But Lambert and Carlson believed the happy couple were "made for each other," right from the start.

"You always hear about love at first sight, and I never believed in it at all," said Lambert, adding that they were all shocked at how Clark and Long just "clicked" right off the bat.

Clark said her family is just as surprised.

"I am normally the sort of person who always thinks things through and doesn't make any unplanned decisions," she said.

Long had asked her over the phone, and Clark agreed, but said she told him she "wouldn't believe it was real until she had a ring."

"I talked to Teresa on the phone," said Carlson, "and I said, 'Wouldn't it be funny if Greg proposed in the airport?'"

Clark laughed and said he'd never do it.

"Neither of us are prone to public displays like that."

The rest is history.

Long proposed to Clark with a Canadian diamond set in white gold.

"He did it right," said Clark, "on one knee with the ring."

Clark's daughter, Racheal, when asked what had happened at the airport that morning, told Yellowknifer, "They kissed."

Clark said that Racheal "just loves Greg," and is happy to be getting a father figure in her life.

Teresa and Racheal now live in Yellowknife as of Sunday morning's plane trip, but Clark says she grew up here, only moving to Edmonton seven years ago.

The couple want to have a full Catholic ceremony in Barrhead Alberta, which is a central location between his family in Ontario, hers in Alberta, and the couple's many friends in Yellowknife.