For Bethany and Grif, it’s love, loyalty, and compassion

March 26, 2022, in Philadelphia

Grif sat in his favorite spot in his favorite bar in Annapolis, Md., on an October night in 2017. Between chats with the bartender, he caught on that the pretty woman a couple of stools down was not having fun — she was on a date, and it was not going well.

Bethany’s friend had set her up. Within minutes, she was bored and had pretty much checked out of the conversation with her date. When he headed for the bathroom, she saw that the handsome regular she had previously noticed but never met was sitting in his usual corner. She moved a stool closer and started talking to him.

“We were chatting and laughing about the situation — that she was supposed to be on a date with this other guy, but here she was talking to me,” said Grif, who is from East Falls.

As for Bethany’s date, “he never came back from the bathroom.” she said.

Bethany was the assistant manager at the local Kate Spade store but lived back home in Seaford, Del. She faced an hour’s drive and had to be back at work in the morning. “I have to get going,” she told Grif reluctantly.

Thinking quickly, Grif said he was headed to another bar and would walk her to her car. In the parking lot, he asked for her phone and typed his number in her contacts. “Text me when you get home so I know you’re OK,” he said.

The Navy had stationed Grif in Washington but he lived in Annapolis. When he received Bethany’s text, he asked her to meet him back in his corner the next night.

For the rest of 2017 and all of 2018, Bethany and Grif enjoyed their comfortable and casual relationship. They would go to dinner, meet at each other’s homes to watch sports or movies, or hang out in Grif’s Corner at the bar.

The Navy moved Grif to Virginia Beach in spring 2019. “Both of us thought when I was moving away, that might be the end,” Grif said. “At first, neither of us were interested in a long-distance relationship. But we found out we weren’t willing to say goodbye to each other, either.”

Grif’s 2019 deployment on the Harry S Truman was fast approaching, and there was something he had to do first. “Why don’t we make this an official thing?” he asked Bethany. That November, she took him to his ship, which left the Norfolk Naval Station and headed across the Atlantic to the Mediterranean Sea, the Gulf of Aden, and the Arabian Sea. The couple spoke by phone and email frequently but did not see each other again until June 2020, when the Truman returned to Norfolk.

“I love you,” Grif told Bethany within a couple of hours of being back on land. “I love you, too,” she said.

“We had both fallen in love during his deployment, but each of us decided we wanted to say it for the first time in person,” said Bethany, who is now 30.

Bethany loves that Grif is direct and to the point. “When he loves something or someone, he is completely devoted,” she said. “He is one of the most loyal people I have ever known. He gives things his all.”

“When I say I love her beauty, I’m not just talking about her looks, but her whole soul,” said Grif, who is now 39. “She has so much compassion and tolerance. With that whole loyalty thing she talks about? Some people might call it passion, others would say it’s crazy. But what made me absolutely know that she was the one is how she was with my family, particularly the way she interacted with my cousin’s kids, who are my little knuckleheads.”

In spring 2021, Grif called his favorite bar and asked for a big favor. Their parents should meet, he suggested to Bethany, and where better than Annapolis?

Grif drove from his Virginia base to Chestertown, Md., where Bethany then lived and taught high school Spanish. They drove together to the Federal House, and, as Grif knew they would, arrived first and found his corner empty.

Grif told Bethany that while he had always enjoyed the corner of the bar where they were sitting, it became one of the most important places in his life only after he met Bethany there.

“Will you marry me?” he asked.

“Of course,” she said. They kissed and hugged, and the bartender rang a bell as the whole bar cheered.

Soon after, Bethany’s father, Ronald, her mother, Christine, her mother’s husband, Richard, and Grif’s parents, Joanne and Edward Sr., arrived and joined the celebration.

In June, Grif moved to the Naval Air Station Jacksonville in Florida, where he is now a lieutenant commander. Bethany, who continues to teach high school Spanish, joined him there in July.

The couple married March 26 of this year at the Church of the Gesu on the campus of St. Joseph’s Prep, where Grif went to high school. They wed in a traditional Catholic ceremony.

“I was pretty much a military drill sergeant when it came to the wedding,” said Grif. “I told everyone, ‘Once we are finished inside the church, assemble quickly outside so we can do the sword arch.’ I saw everybody walking out, and then all of a sudden, a huge gust of wind came blowing into the church and everybody comes running back inside.”

The storm quickly passed. Grif’s Navy friends reassembled, a trumpet played the theme from JAG, and the couple walked through the arch as planned.

Then 270 guests joined them for a Union League reception.

The couple’s official first dance was to “To A T,” by Ryan Hurd, a singer-songwriter they love and have spoken to at meet and greets. When Bethany told him their first dance would be to his song, he asked for a video. Bethany tagged him on Instagram, and the artist responded with his thanks.

Beauty and the Beast is the couple’s favorite movie, and their wedding hashtag, “Beauty and the Grif,” was a riff on the title. They thought everyone would join them when they danced to the movie theme by Peabo Bryson and Celine Dion, but their guests held back to watch the couple do their thing. “It was like a second first dance,” Grif said.

A bit later, Bethany and Grif left the action for a balcony above the Union League ballroom. “We saw all of our friends and family coming together and enjoying each other’s company. They didn’t even need us,” said Bethany. It felt like their 270 family members and friends had, through their wedding, become one big family, she said.

The couple spent nearly two weeks in French Polynesia. “There were so many fish. And we were swimming with sharks and rays and seeing sea turtles,” said Grif. “It could not have been more perfect.”

Bethany agrees. “You couldn’t pull me out of the water, and I don’t even like swimming.”

Wherever the Navy next sends him, Grif is just glad that he and Bethany can go together. The couple hope to soon add a little knucklehead or two of their own to their family.