Garden City Marine Captain Christine Vallely (Garden City High School Class of 1997) had the surprise of her life when she recently returned from a seven-month tour of duty in Iraq, where she flew F/A-18 Hornets as part of an All-Weather Fighter Attack Squadron.

With a job requiring nerves of steel, Marine Captain Chrissie "got the shivers" when Navy Lt. Joseph Houser of El Paso, TX was there to greet her, in a suit, as she stepped off her aircraft.

Joseph's bended-knee proposal, on the tarmac, was greeted with cheers from everyone in the excited homecoming crowd, including her dad, Thomas Vallely, who had traveled from Garden City to Beaufort, SC, to welcome his daughter home.

The joint-operations couple had met at the US Naval Academy in 1997 and graduated together in 2001. They were just friends back then, as Chrissie went into the Marine Corps and Joe joined the Navy. It wasn't until November 2004 when she invited Joe to a Marine Corps ball that they became a military "power couple."

They made the six-and-a-half-hour drive between Beaufort, SC and Norfolk, VA every weekend when both were stateside. But the long distance relationship grew much longer once Chrissie was deployed to Iraq. Maintenance and logistics delays nearly caused the couple to miss Chrissie's homecoming reunion.

Now that she has returned, Joe will be leaving on his next lengthy tour of duty. "It's painful sometimes, but hopefully this will get better," Chrissie said. If a smile as wide as an aircraft carrier is an indication, it's getting better already! The happy couple is now planning a February 2007 wedding, between deployments.