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Love, marriage and monster trucks
By RYAN DAVIS, Times Staff Writer NEW PORT RICHEY -- Ursula DiMaria could have known it would come to this after her first date with John Windhorst. Three and half years ago, she responded to his personal ad in the newspaper. On their first date, he asked her to come back to his place. "She thought I was a fast mover," he recalled last week. (She didn't disagree.) But Windhorst wasn't thinking of kisses. "I said, 'Here, have a glass of wine. I want to watch monster trucks,' " Windhorst said. They watched. And the next day, they went on a second date. He never contacted the eight other women who had answered his personal ad. And on Saturday afternoon, Ursula DiMaria married John Windhorst standing in their Candlelight Court backyard in front of Gun Slinger, a truck with 51/2-foot-high tires. DiMaria, 48, and Windhorst, 52, were surrounded by a couple of dozen friends, as well as the lawn chairs, grills and coolers for the ensuing party. She wore a maroon, calf-length dress, black high heels and red and white flowers in her blonde hair. He wore a gray suit, black loafers and a white collarless shirt. As they clutched each others' hands and said their vows, DiMaria rested her bouquet of yellow roses and lilies in the grooves of the truck tires. At the end of the eight-minute ceremony, their cheeks reddened and each of them cried. Windhorst first came into contact with the monster truck Gun Slinger and its owner, Scott Hartsock, nearly 10 years ago. Windhorst's daughter, Jennifer, interviewed Hartsock, who is from Oldsmar, and wrote an elementary school paper, "My Day at the Truck Races." She got an A+ .Hartsock regularly takes his truck to grand openings and even to birthday parties. (It arrives in an 18-wheel rig and must be assembled.) But until Saturday, it had never been to a wedding, he said Windhorst didn't have to talk his bride into the idea. She helped think of it herself. Both DiMaria, a certified nursing assistant, and Windhorst, a security worker at Lockheed Martin, have been married before. He had a traditional ceremony at a Lutheran Church in New York. The only vehicle involved was a limousine. She had 13 bridesmaids and a long white train on her dress during a ceremony at a Catholic church in New Jersey. "That's what I wanted. That's what I had," she said. "This is exciting." She used to call oil painting her hobby. Now she has a Dale Earnhardt Jr. front license plate on her Chevrolet Monte Carlo. Windhorst's passion started when he built a "funny car" at age 19. Recently he added a room to his house where he can watch car races and monster trucks. The room has a table made from a Dale Earnhardt Jr. tire, 162 mini-Corvettes on display and a signed Richard Petty racing suit hanging on the wall. He and his wife's wedding cake depicted a truck crushing cars. Gun Slinger's owner figured that any couple who host a backyard monster truck wedding have a solid relationship. And any woman who would let her boyfriend get married in front of his monster truck . . . "She's got to be all right," he said.
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From today's Pasco Times Letters |
