Love on Wheels

Real life isn't always pretty. But with someone by your side who understands your struggles and helps you overcome them, there is life after the "meet cute."

Remember that moment? If you’ve had it, you will. Hollywood calls it the “meet cute,” the precise moment when a future romantic couple meets for the first time in a way that seems almost staged. (Well, in Hollywood it would be, but that’s another matter.) In reality, everyone’s meet cute is different. Some may be more amusing, ironic, and noteworthy, but each story is life-changing.

This is about two couples whose meet cutes were anything but conventional.

Katie & Corbin Beu

Corbin Beu, a wheelchair-skills instructor, helps chair users maneuver through their lives with more ease. As a T12 paraplegic for nearly 20 years after a car accident left him paralyzed from the waist down, he knows how difficult the transition from full to limited mobility can be.

“The public is not very well educated on these types of disabilities,” Corbin says, which can make going places a frustrating experience.

Prior to his injury, Corbin, 39, was a very active individual, serving two years in the Navy as an electronics warfare engineer and member of the search and rescue crew. He continued to be active after sustaining a spinal-cord injury (SCI) and was a member of the 1998 U.S. Paralympics sled hockey team.

Katie Milner, 29, is a neurological physical therapist at St. Joseph’s Hospital & Medical Center in Phoenix, specializing in SCI. Always on the lookout for new programs to help her patients rehabilitate, she attended the wheelchair-skills class conducted by the Arizona Spinal Cord Injury Association in 2008, where Corbin was an instructor.

Corbin and Katie’s meet cute was short and seemingly fruitless. They simply met and parted ways. A year and a half later, in summer 2009, they attended an SCI retreat together. After a short bit of time, Corbin’s charming, humorous ways won Katie over. They were married on November 11, 2011 (11-11-11), and live in Phoenix.

Not Always Easy

Katie is not a wheelchair user, and her father’s voice resonated in her head. Before she started dating Corbin, she had mentioned to her dad she knew a quadriplegic who was dating an able-bodied person.

“Don’t you ever do that, because you’re going to end up taking care of that person for the rest of your life,” he had said. But she quickly silenced that voice.

“[My dad] didn’t realize that someone who has SCI can be independent and doesn’t need to be taken care of,” she says. And this is still a struggle they face today with the general public.

 

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