Teresa Young and Daniel Pruitt, parents of Gracelynn Pruitt

My mother, Teresa Young was 18 years old and a senior in high school when she met my father, Daniel Pruitt, 25. She had been shuffled around as a child from family member to family member after her father remarried and mother left. My father came from a farm life and worked his way to get to OU and was almost done with his degree in architecture. He worked three jobs to pay for his tuition. My father told me that his mother came up to visit him at work one day at a movie theatre in Norman. He introduced her to my mother just weeks after they met and told my grandmother, "This is the woman I'm going to marry."

Both of my parents were extremely poor and just trying to make ends meet. So when they set a date to marry two months after my mother graduated from high school in August of 1973, they couldn't even afford new clothes for the ceremony. My mother invited some of her girlfriends from high school. She also invited her family but only her aunt and grandmother showed up. My father invited his brother and his new wife. They went to a small chapel in Moore and tied the knot. My mother said it was very simple and quick. All the wedding pictures were taken with a cheap camera by one of my mother's friends and most of them are blurry. Kinda like the time that has gone by since that day, so my mother says. They have been married for 34 years now.

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Gracelynn Pruitt