The Rest of the Story…
Owners of The Cottages on the Prairie, Cecil & Cathy McGarrah could not have been more excited to have been featured in the March 2026 issue of the Bartlesville Monthly Magazine recently, but like a good old fashioned Paul Harvey broadcast, we wanted to give you “The Rest of the Story” in Cecil McGarrah’s own words.
From the desk (and heart) of Cecil McGarrah:
“Just a little story of us that goes as follows:
Cathy and I met in Bible class at Rhema Bible Church in 1992.
We both sang in the choir, and I watched her from afar. She was the prettiest lady I’d ever seen…
Our Bible class was going to a Tulsa Drillers baseball game on July 3rd, 1993. At the game, the team hit a grand slam - which meant that with your ticket stub you got a ‘Buy-One-Get-One-Free’ dinner at the Spaghetti Warehouse in Tulsa.
We just happened to sit next to each other on the bus going back to the Rhema campus. So, I asked her if she would like to go have dinner using our ticket stub the next night - which was July 4th, followed by us watching the fireworks in Tulsa. Cathy said ‘yes’ with a sarcastic response of whose ticket stub would we use…
That next night we ate and ended up missing the fireworks because we talked until the restaurant closed…”
(I just love the way he loves her… But, back to Cecil’s story.)
“Fast forward to many dates and then proposing later that summer on August 26, 1993, we were married on June 4, 1994, at Rhema Bible Church.
Sidenote: I proposed at the gazebo at Rhema Park. Power was out at the time due to construction, so my future best man and his wife lined the railing around the gazebo with votive candles. They hid around the corner, so when I asked Cathy to sit, it was their cue to play violin music that I had picked out earlier that day.
After a week in Aruba for our honeymoon, we returned home to Broken Arrow, Oklahoma where we lived in the same house for the next 31 years.
Through many challenges in life, we stand today stronger together - because I believe love always wins.
As the Bartlesville Monthly Magazine article tells the reader above, we moved to Pawhuska on July 31, 2025, as our new permanent residence - and now as we find ourselves nestled in - we have many ideas and projects in process that we believe are Divinely inspired by the One who brought us to our now forever home in Pawhuska, Oklahoma where #TheSmilesAreAlwaysFree.”
Cecil and Cathy enjoyed the Valentine’s Dinner at The Pioneer Woman Mercantile - and even had time to take a photo with Ree Drummond, The Pioneer Woman.
