By Jae-Ha Kim
Chicago Sun-Times
January 30, 2000
Holly Gilson didn’t think twice when her boyfriend asked if she had quarters. She figured they needed them for the parking meters by the Lounge Ax, where they were headed.
Never mind that the club wasn’t scheduled to be open that night. Or that it was empty when they got there. The doors were open, so they just walked right in.
“In retrospect, I suppose it was weird,” says Holly, 33. “But we do so many things spur of the moment that I didn’t question any of this. I mean, he had taken me to a heart transplant, so this didn’t seem that out of the ordinary.”
(By the way, the heart transplant wasn’t Matthew Gilson’s idea of a date. The free-lance editorial photographer was on assignment.)
Once at the club, Matthew suggested that they have their pictures taken in the photo booth. Did she have any quarters handy?
First shot: The two mug for the camera.
Second shot: The couple share a romantic kiss.
Third shot: He pulls out a ring and proposes.
Fourth shot: She accepts.
“I didn’t pick the Lounge Ax for any other reason than that it had a photo booth,” says Matthew, 35. “I called and arranged with the owners to leave the doors open for us to go in.”
This was on Feb. 29, 1996–a leap year.
The next day, the couple boarded a flight for Orlando, Fla., where they were going to vacation at Disney World. Matthew took quite a risk, proposing on the day before a long trip.
“Yeah, if she had said, `No,’ we probably would’ve gotten there and said, `Um, separate rooms, please,’ ” he says, laughing.
The couple began dating in September 1993, after a mutual friend alerted Holly that Matthew and his girlfriend had broken up. Holly rang him up.
“We had known each other for a while before that,” says Holly, marketing manager at the Lincoln Park Zoo. “But either he was dating someone or I had a boyfriend. The timing was never right.”
Married on Oct. 12, 1996, the couple own a 6,000-square-foot Logan Square storefront that serves as both their home and Matthew’s studio.
In the past, the couple have celebrated their wedding anniversary by touring Munich, Prague and Salzburg, and taking a trip to the Wisconsin Dells. They haven’t decided what they’ll do this year, but they plan on celebrating the anniversary of their engagement as well.
“It’s leap year this year,” Matthew says. “So it’d be kind of appropriate to celebrate it.”
