CHEYENNE — The night Brandon Boyer met Shilee Calhoun at an unplanned Colorado bar, romance was not in the air.
It was certainly the night Boyer proposed to her, in the middle of Ian Munsick’s concert on the first day of the 10-day Cheyenne Frontier Days festival.
Munsick was busy making history as the first Wyoming native to headline Cheyenne Frontier Days, but he also noticed what was going on in the middle of his concert while singing the couple’s favorite song, “More Than Me.”
The song was inspired by Munsick’s own wife, Caroline, whom he had just met when he wrote it.
Boyer and Calhoun say Munsick is their favorite artist, and they’ve frequently shared his songs during their two-and-a-half-year journey together, which began unexpectedly.
“My friend Andy Klatt and I were out for dinner,” Boyer told Cowboy State Daily. “And we were just hanging out, because we had been out really late the night before, and I kept telling him, ‘I am not going out tonight. I don’t want to drink. I want to go home. “I want to go to bed.”
But before long, Klatt had twisted his friend’s arm, promising to “just drink one beer” at The Sundance, a bar in Fort Collins.
“I was like, this never happens,” Boyer said, rolling his eyes. “We never drink just one beer. But, okay, we’ll go.”
So Boyer arrived at The Sundance with one goal in mind: leave 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 explained to Cowboy State Daily. “So, there I was standing around in my gym clothes.”
Calhoun referred to the venue as a country bar. People were dressed in cowboy hats, boots, jeans, and shirts.
Calhoun kept trying to persuade her friend, Makayla Meyer, to leave.
“I am standing around looking like, ‘I’m going on a run,'” Calhoun told her friend. “I don’t fit in, ma’am.”
However, Meyer refused to leave. She insisted on remaining for “just a little while.”
Meyer had a goal, and while she did have a beer in her hand, it wasn’t necessarily to have fun right then.
She’d heard far too many times that Calhoun no longer believed in love, that she’d given up on men completely, and that she didn’t want to date.
At all. Never again.
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 told me. “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, on the other hand, was able to recognize a good match.
“See that girl there?” Shilee’s friend said to Boyer, pointing to Calhoun. “She’s a friend of mine, and you should ask her to dance.”
At first, Boyer refused. He still describes himself as the “shy and nervous” type.
“Asking a stranger to dance is just not something I normally do,” he told me.
But Shilee’s friend wouldn’t take no for an answer.
“Go on,” she urged. “Ask her to dance.”
Dream Men Don’t Just Come Along … Until They Do
Calhoun thought Boyer appeared out of nowhere.
“I did not believe in love before him,” she told me. “And I wasn’t the girl who had boyfriends and said, ‘Oh, I’m going to marry this one.'”
“No, I wanted to remain single until my ideal man came along. And maybe it never happens. Dream men do not just come along.”
Calhoun admitted that she once lost faith in God. She would sometimes sit in her closet, cry from loneliness, and then pray to God, begging him to send her that dream man someday.
When she did this, she was able to see him in her mind’s eye and felt better. For a short 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 in, eager to get out as soon as possible.
“I was just having the worst time of my life,” she told me. “And then, out of nowhere, he came over and asked me to dance.”
Calhoun was stunned the moment she laid eyes on Boyer. She couldn’t believe what she was seeing and was almost speechless.
“I was like, ‘Oh my word, this is that man I prayed for,'” she told me. “When I met him, I immediately fell in love. I don’t want to admit it, but he has treated me like a queen since the day we met. I have never been treated better. “He is very respectful.”
After dancing, the two talked for two hours, and any thoughts of leaving the bar were 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 recalls feeling nervous but hopeful after their first date.
“I just knew that with everything we connected on that night, she was the one for me,” recalled Boyer. “I fell in love with her very quickly.” “She makes me smile and laugh.”
However, the couple did not admit any of this to each other on that date or the next. Things unfolded gradually. It was a look here and there, followed by a texted song here and there.
Ian Munsick’s songs became their favorites to trade. The songs reminded them of each other and the reasons they were falling in love.
“Munsick has been, I would say, our country guy since we met,” Boyer told the reporter. “Every song has been a reflection of what I sent her and how I felt about her. And I prayed to God for someone like her to come along and treat me the way she does, and I couldn’t have asked for anything better.”
Boyer purchased a ring to propose to Calhoun in October of last year, but he struggled with how to make the occasion epic and unforgettable. He would only get to ask her once, 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 found exactly what he was looking for: the ideal setting for a proposal.
As the date approached, Boyer worked hard not to reveal anything.
“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 laughed.
Boyer wanted it to be a sweet, yet complete, surprise.
Even at the Munsick concert, Boyer used the same deflection technique, taking her hand 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 elicited a huge eye roll from him because he had said the same thing a few weeks prior.
But, eye roll or not, she 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 as surprised as Boyer had expected.
“I was ready for the dip,” she said. “And he was on one knee, and I thought, ‘Oh wow.’ I had no idea. None. “I had no idea this was going to happen.”
People were screaming and cheering for the couple, and Munsick was even pointing at them from the stage, according to Calhoun.
“I cannot be mad at (Boyer),” she said. “I’ve never had a dream proposal, but this was like a fairy tale, and I’m still shocked. I couldn’t have asked for anything more perfect.”
The only thing that could make it better, she said, would be if Ian Munsick agreed to perform “More Than Me” at their wedding.
The couple, incidentally, has not yet set a wedding date, and this is where Calhoun may just get even with surprises.
When asked when the wedding would be, she laughed.
“It’ll be in a few weeks,” she said, staring at Boyer. “Maybe a few months.”
