This couple's final choices for all the many details of their special day are being made by a radio station's audience.
By BETH N. GRAY, Times Staff Writer
Published April 2, 2005
BROOKSVILLE - Joy Johnson and Robbie Pritz had the kind of meeting, courtship and engagement most single people dream about. Now they're getting a wedding beyond their wildest imagination - and they don't have to pay a dime.
The Brooksville couple won a $25,000 wedding sponsored by a Christian music radio station, the JOY FM, which is based in Sarasota and reaches Central and southwest Florida listeners at 88.1 FM and 91.5 FM.
Johnson, 24, and Pritz, 22, won from among 28 other couples who entered. They filled out questionnaires, participated in three premarital counseling sessions and submitted to on-air interviews. Listeners voted online for their picks to win the station's first wedding extravaganza. The lucky couple heard the news Monday.
Johnson and Pritz will be married May 14 in the floating chapel, Weddings on Water, in Clearwater Bay. Afterward, the newlyweds and 100 guests will be whisked to Island Way Grill at Clearwater Beach for a reception.
The couple's honeymoon will be a four-day cruise in September aboard the Music Boat, which steams out of Miami to Key West and Cozumel. The boat features top contemporary Christian music artists performing live in concert, said Carmen Brown, the station's promotions director. The newlyweds will dine with the artists.
Johnson, a student in violin performance at the University of South Florida, also teaches private violin lessons. Pritz is a student in the emergency medical technician program at Pasco-Hernando Community College. With their busy schedules, they are getting lots of help with the wedding arrangements.
Listeners to the Joy FM are voting on the details. Contest entrants had to agree to accept the voters' choices.
"The whole point of the contest was whatever our listeners decided," Brown said.
Through 6 p.m. today, the station's faithful are casting ballots for their choice among three wedding invitations, introduced to the radio audience Monday. The samples are available for viewing and voting on the station's Web site, www.thejoyfm.com
Next week, the choice will be Johnson's wedding gown. She has whittled down the selection to three.
Describing the gowns on radio and picturing the possibilities posed a bit of a problem for the station, Brown said. The bridegroom traditionally isn't supposed to see the bride in wedding attire until the ceremony.
"He'll have to make a vow to us," Brown said of Pritz, "before he makes a vow to her, that he'll stay off the Web and not see the gowns."
During Week 3, the audience will vote on a tuxedo for Pritz. The following week's balloting will focus on music for the wedding ceremony. Then will come choices for the bride's bouquet. Lastly, voters will select the wedding cake.
"Even though this is a wedding we are giving away," Brown pointed out, "it was important to us that (the couple) chose the right spouse."
Hence the counseling sessions that dealt with "faith issues, their future, how they see their roles in marriage, children, finances."
Johnson and Pritz learned on their first date last September they had a lot in common. They both grew up in Brooksville, both attended Community Bible Church with their families, both had traveled on a church mission: she in Thailand, he in Nicaragua.
"We knew of each other and each other's families but never had the same circle of friends," Johnson said.
"Our paths never crossed," Pritz added.
Johnson graduated from a homeschool program in 1998. Pritz graduated from Hernando High in 2000. She went off to Moody Bible Institute in Chicago, while he went off to Gardner-Webb University in North Carolina.
Johnson and Pritz finally crossed paths last September at a gathering of his family friends that included a violin student of Johnson's. The friends pressed Pritz about a Christian girl he should meet.
Pritz demurred, saying, "There's no one out there for me." But he thought about it, and when he learned that she had done mission work, he was intrigued.
"So, I knew there was this person who had the same interests as me, so I figured I should give her a call," he said. "I really didn't have any ideas other than to have a friend."
Before the call, Johnson said, she was too busy with teaching, studying and playing music to pursue a relationship. But her mother, Vicki Johnson, "had a vision to put them together," she said.
"He just called," Johnson remembers. He said a bunch of them were going out after church and would she want to come along, and could she give him trumpet lessons? she recalled.
The group drove to the Cheesecake Factory at International Plaza in Tampa.
"We talked about missions. There wasn't a dull moment. It was so comfortable," Johnson said. "Our eyes just lit up talking to each other."
Added Pritz, "From the first conversation it was more than I ever expected. We were talking and things were moving around us that we didn't even notice and we were looking at each other with intense eyes. It was pretty cool."
"The next day I was saying, "I hope, I hope he calls back,' " Johnson said.
Pritz called.
Last December, Pritz led his date on a treasure hunt, something he'd done before. She found notes and trinkets in the glove box of his car, in the back yard of his parents' house, finally a large, gift-wrapped box. She opened it to discover a small box.
"It was a ring and I was so surprised I started hyperventilating. I'm on the floor, going "augh, augh.' He asked me to be his wife."
Of course, she said yes.
Johnson will graduate from USF in May. Pritz, who works at Brooksville Regional Hospital as a transporter-secretary, aims to transfer to PHCC's nursing program. His graduation depends on the timing of his transfer.
They will be married by the Rev. Jim Campbell, owner of the Radio Training Network that includes the JOY FM station, with Pritz's grandfather, Walter Pritz of Tampa, retired U.S. Air Force chaplain, sharing the duties. Walter Pritz officiated at the marriage of Robbie's parents, Beth and Ken Pritz.
The idea for the wedding giveaway came to Brown as "an inspiration" a day in January while she was driving home from work, she said. She'd seen reality TV. Why not reality radio? she thought.
"It really was a God-ordained idea." As Brown sought additional sponsors to add to the station's giving, she noted, "Every door that I knocked on, he opened up every one of those doors. Everybody was totally on board."
The JOY FM, operating for 18 years, is a noncommercial, listener-supported and 501 (c-3) nonprofit organization, meaning donations are tax deductible. It can be reached by calling 941-753-0401.
Beth Gray may be contacted at graybethn@ earthlink.net.
