Bryce Canyon love story lives on through granddaughter
By Mythili Gubbi
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BRYCE CANYON, Utah (KSTU) — Decades after two people met at one of Utah’s natural gems and built a life together, their granddaughter had a milestone moment in her story there.
It’s a love story that began in 1959 at Bryce Canyon.
“It was the year I graduated from high school and I had been hired by the Utah Parks Company to work down at Bryce Canyon,” recalled 81-year-old Elva Orton.
That was when she first saw and met Steve. He had been working at Bryce for the previous three years. She told her friend that he was “awfully cute” and wanted him to ask her out. He did, and they went on their first date together.
“We fell in love after that, and we fell madly in love all summer,” said Elva.
Elva was supposed to go to the University of Utah to study and teach dance. Instead, she started school at BYU, where Steve was.
“We would meet each other between and after classes, study together, and just had a wonderful romance,” she said.
They were two years apart when Steve was on a mission trip in Australia. They wrote letters to each other. Elva has saved every one of them.
“I promised him that I would wait for him and that my heart belonged to him forever,” said Elva.
When Steve came back, they reunited where their story began.
“We wanted to fulfill our dream of meeting up at Bryce Canyon. We pulled up, and I could see him standing on the porch right where we said we were going to meet,” she said.
After planning a wedding in two weeks, with Elva borrowing her dress and sewing all of her bridesmaids’ dresses, the couple got married on September 22, 1962.
“We knew it would be for eternity,” she said.
On the same day 60 years later, their love inspired another story.
“It’s a pretty important part of our story,” said Steve and Elva’s granddaughter, Paige Orton. “Bryce Canyon is just like the most romantic place in the world in my brain because that’s where my grandparents met, so there must be something magical going on down there.”
That day, Garrett Arnoldsen got down on one knee for his now fiancé, Paige.
“The most romantic proposal that I ever could have asked for,” said Paige.
“It was pretty early on in the time that I knew Paige that I saw the picture of Elva and Steve and she mentioned how it was her kind of goal to recreate that one day,” said Garrett.
That day, they recreated a candid shot of Steve and Elva at the very same spot at Bryce Canyon.
“She had noticed the love in her grandparents. We were very very happy, we adored each other, every day of our lives,” said Elva.
Elva’s recipe for a marriage of 55 years like hers: “Always do more for the other person than you expect of them to do for you.”
In 2017, Steve passed away. Elva compiled all their memories and their love story in a binder to hold on to forever. It had pictures from their courtship, working together at Bryce Canyon and then Zion, their wedding, 7 kids, 17 grandchildren, family trees, and all their memories in between.
“I put this whole story together,” said Elva. One year for Christmas, she made copies of that book for her family, so all of them could have the story.
“I don’t think there’s anyone in my life that I saw being more in love than my grandparents,” said Paige.
“This world would be a wonderful place if every couple had a romantic, wonderful marriage as Steve and I had,” said Elva.
Paige and Garrett are planning a wedding in a couple of months, and they hope to take their future kids to Bryce Canyon someday and show them where their great-grandparents fell in love, and their parents got engaged — the makings of some beautiful love stories.
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