Doug Lubinski was in his early 20s when he came to Drumheller in about 1981 to work for Don Ostergard seeding.
After living in the area for a couple of years, he would see a certain girl driving around town in her mother’s white Cadillac. He was determined to meet her somehow, someday.
“I would see her because I used to work at the Curling Club and she worked at the dealership, and she was driving around all the time,” he recalls.
He hatched a plan. One day he went to the florists and grabbed a couple of roses, and hoped to meet up with her on the street, stop her, and ask her to dinner. It was a romantic plan, the only hitch was making sure he caught her eye.
“I drove around town the whole day, and she was nowhere to be seen. The roses were beginning to wilt already, so I was going by the post office and thought if there’s someone there I’ll just give them the roses,” he recalls.
The plan looked like a failure, and he ended up making another girl’s day with the gift of flowers.
“I pulled away from the stop sign and there she goes right past,” he says.
Undeterred, he goes to the florist the next day and begins his quest again. This time he sees her coming down the street in the Cadillac, but she has a guy with her. Despite this, he took his shot.
“I stopped her, gave her the roses and asked her out for dinner and she accepted,” he said.
The guy? Turned out to be her cousin.
There began the courtship of Doug and Barb. This was the 1980’s and while her mom took a shine to Doug, her dad was a little less impressed with the long-haired bearded fellow dating his daughter. He quickly won him over and Barb and Doug were engaged two years later and moved in together.
He recalls when making arrangements for the wedding with the pastor, and earlier that year he had been hired on with PanCanadian. This meant shaving his beard and trimming his locks. He arranged to meet the pastor, who came to his in-laws to meet. They stood around for a bit when the pastor said ‘as soon as Douglas gets here we’ll get started, not recognizing the cleanly shaven groom to be.
The couple was married at the Dalum Church in 1988. At the wedding, the pastor told a story about the importance of forgiveness, and how Doug had forgiven him for not recognizing him.
“We couldn’t take a honeymoon because I had just gotten this job. We had planned an East Coast motorcycle trip. I had bought a Honda Apencade touring bike,” he remembers.
While they couldn’t make it to the East Coast, he did manage to get a four-day weekend and they took a motorcycle trip through the pass and to Kalispell, Whitefish, and home.
Over the last 33 years, there have been more road trips than you can count on both hands. They also have two grown children.
When asked what the secret to 33 years is, he replies, “Never argue, talk it out. In all the time we have been together, I don’t believe there was once where we raised our voices to each other.”
