CHEYENNE — Romance wasn’t in the air the night Brandon Boyer met Shilee Calhoun at a Colorado bar that neither had planned to go to.
It certainly was the night Boyer proposed to her, however, right in the middle of Ian Munsick’s concert on the first day of the 10-day Cheyenne Frontier Days celebration.
Munsick was busy making history as the first Wyoming native to headline Cheyenne Frontier Days, but the A-lister also noticed what was going down in the middle of his concert while singing what happens to be the couple’s favorite song, “More Than Me.”
The song was inspired by Munsick’s own wife, Caroline, whom he had just met at the time he wrote the song.
Boyer and Calhoun say Munsick is their favorite artist, and that they have often shared his songs during what has so far been a two-and-a-half-year journey together that had a most unlikely beginning.
“My friend Andy Klatt and I were out to dinner,” Boyer told Cowboy State Daily. “And we were just hanging out, because we were out the night before really late, and I kept telling him, like, ‘I am not going out tonight. I do not want to drink. I want to go home. I want to go to bed.’”
But before too long, Klatt had twisted his friend’s arm, promising they would “just drink one beer” at a bar in Fort Collins called The Sundance.
“I was like, this never happens,” Boyer said, rolling his eyes. “We never have just one beer. But fine, fine, we’ll go.”
So it was that Boyer arrived at The Sundance with just one goal in mind — leaving as soon as possible.
Time For An Intervention
Calhoun had a similar goal in mind when she arrived at The Sundance.
“I was supposed to go to the gym, but one of my friends tricked me,” she told Cowboy State Daily. “So, there I was standing around in my gym clothes.”
Calhoun described the venue as a country bar. People were wearing their cowboy hats and boots, with their jeans and shirts.
Calhoun kept trying to convince her friend, Makayla Meyer, to leave.
“I am standing around looking like, ‘I’m going to go on a run,’” Calhoun told her friend. “I don’t fit in, ma’am.”
But Meyer wasn’t leaving. She insisted on staying for “just a little while.”
Meyer had a goal and, though she did have a beer in her hand, it wasn’t necessarily about having fun right then.
She had heard just a few too many times that Calhoun no longer believed in love, that she was giving up on men altogether, and that she no longer wanted to date.
At all. Period. Ever.
It was time for an intervention.
“We were just kind of all at the bar talking, and her friend was talking with our friends,” Boyer recalled. “And she kind of, ‘I saw Shilee standing there, but she was talking to some other guy’ — so I was just standing there and didn’t know what to do.”
Shilee’s friend, however, knew a good match when she saw one.
“See that girl there?” Shilee’s friend said to Boyer, pointing at Calhoun. “She’s a friend of mine, and you should ask her to dance.”
At first, Boyer declined. To this day, he still describes himself as the “shy and nervous” type.
“Asking a stranger to dance is just not something I normally do,” he said.
But Shilee’s friend wasn’t going to take no for an answer.
“Go on,” she insisted. “Ask her to dance.”
Dream Men Don’t Just Come Along … Until They Do
From Calhoun’s perspective, Boyer seemed to come from out of nowhere.
“I did not believe in love before him,” she said. “And like, I was not that girl who had boyfriends and was like, ‘Oh I’m gonna marry this one.’
“No, I wanted to be single forever until my dream man came along. And maybe that never happens. Dream men don’t just come along.”
For a time, Calhoun said she even lost her faith in God as well. Though there were times she would sit in her closet and cry from loneliness, and then pray to God, begging him to send that dream man to her someday.
When she did that, she could often see him in her mind’s eye, and she would feel better. For a little while.
So there she was — standing around in gym clothes, sticking out like a sore thumb, feeling completely exposed and out of place in a bar she didn’t want to be at, anxious to leave just as soon as possible.
“I was just having the worst time of my life,” she said. “And then, out of nowhere, he came over and asked me to dance.”
Calhoun was gobsmacked the minute she laid eyes on Boyer. She couldn’t believe what she was seeing, and she almost couldn’t talk.
“I was like, ‘Oh my word, this is that man I prayed for,’” she said. “When I met him, I just fell in love instantly. I don’t want to admit that, but he treated me like a queen from the day we met. I’ve never been treated better. He is so respectful.”
After dancing, the two talked for two hours and all thought of escaping the bar had gone.
Struggling With The Question
“Sometimes, first dates can be awkward,” Calhoun said. “But our first date, it was like we’d known each other for years. We talked the whole drive up to Blackhawk, and it was never weird, never awkward.”
Boyer remembers being nervous, but hopeful, after the first date.
“I just knew that with everything we connected on that night, she was the one for me,” Boyer said. “I fell in love very quickly with her. She makes me smile and laugh.”
But the couple didn’t admit any of this to each other that date, nor the next. Things unfolded gradually. It was a look here and there, then a texted song here and there.
Ian Munsick tunes became their favorites to trade. The songs made them think of each other and all the reasons they were both falling in love.
“Munsick has been, I would say, our country guy since we met,” Boyer said. “Every song has kind of been just what I’ve sent her and what I thought about her. And like, I prayed to God, too, for somebody like her to come along and treat me the way she treats me, takes care of me, and I couldn’t ask for anything more.”
Boyer bought a ring to propose to Calhoun in October of last year, but he struggled with how to make the proposal an epic and unforgettable night. He was only going to get to ask her one time, so it had to be perfect.
“He would grab my hand sometimes, and he’d be like, ‘Wouldn’t a ring look beautiful on that hand?’” Calhoun said. “And I’m like, ‘Well, if that’s what you think, maybe you should do it already.’”
Complete Surprise
Finally, when Cheyenne Frontier Days announced Munsick as the headliner, Boyer knew he’d been given exactly what he’d been looking for — the perfect venue for a proposal.
As the date approached, Boyer worked hard not to give things away.
“She had always told me that she would know when she’s getting proposed to, because I would do something special and take her somewhere, and make sure she had her nails done correctly,” Boyer said.
Boyer wanted it to be a sweet — but complete — surprise.
Even at the Munsick concert, Boyer kept up the same method of deflection, taking her hand during the concert and telling her it would look better with a ring on it.
“She just looked at me and she’s like, ‘Well, why don’t you just do it already?’” Boyer said. “And so, I told her, ‘It’ll happen soon, in a few weeks.’”
That earned him a great big eye roll, because he’d already said that very thing a few weeks ago.
But eye roll or not, she still agreed to dance with him to their favorite song, “More Than Me.”
When he fell to one knee during the song after twirling her around, she was just as surprised as Boyer had hoped.
“I was ready to go in for the dip,” she said. “And he was on one knee, and I was like, ‘Oh wow.’ I had no idea. None. Not an inkling in my mind that this was coming.”
People around the couple were screaming and cheering them on, and Munsick himself was even pointing at the couple from the stage, Calhoun said.
“I cannot be mad at (Boyer),” she said. “I’ve never had a dream proposal, but that was like a fairy tale, and I’m still in shock. I couldn’t have asked for anything better or more perfect.”
The only thing that could make it more perfect, she added, would be if Ian Munsick himself were to agree to come and play “More Than Me” at their wedding.
The couple, incidentally, have not yet set a date for the wedding, and here is where Calhoun might just get even on surprises.
Asked when the wedding would be, she laughed.
“It’ll be in a few weeks,” she said, looking at Boyer. “Maybe a few months.”
Renée Jean can be reached at renee@cowboystatedaily.com.
