SIDNEY — It seems that everyone loves a love story.
The Sidney Daily News has learned that its article and photo, which ran earlier this month, about Goldie and Brett “Joe” Gariety has been published on websites around the world.
The Garietys were married in late May in a wedding in Tawawa Park, thanks to Joe’s Hospice nurse, Carrie Barga. Joe has been diagnosed with stage 4 lung cancer.
The Sidney Daily News published their story on June 4. It garnered more than 12,000 views on the newspaper’s Facebook page and more than 6,800 views on the Daily News website. Because it seemed to be so popular locally, editors released it and the wedding photo to the Associated Press (AP). Print, broadcast and online news outlets who are members of the AP had access to both beginning June 5.
The Sidney Daily News headline had been “Cinderella story comes true.” The AP released the story with the headline, “Reunited couple doesn’t let cancer stop dream wedding.”
Within the next five days, either the story, the photo, or both were picked up by 52 outlets, including newspapers and their websites in San Francisco and Fresno, California; Kansas City, Missouri; Washington, D.C.; Oklahoma City, Oklahoma; Parkersburg, West Virginia, Tuscon, Arizona; Bradenton, Florida; Danbury Connecticut; Albany, New York; Seattle, Washington; Columbus, Georgia; Lancaster, Pennsylvania; Watertown, Wisconsin; and Gulfport, Mississippi.
It ran on the websites of television stations in Salt Lake City, Utah, Mobile, Alabama, and Albuquerque, New Mexico, in addition to WHIO-TV in Dayton and WBNS-TV in Columbus.
It was picked up by Newsweek, now an online-only magazine, and the Hospice Times.
Newspapers and websites in Ohio that ran it were in Dayton, Greenville, Bowling Green, Defiance, Lisbon, Lorain, Warren, Cambridge, Middletown, Marietta, Ashtabula and Minerva.
The story was translated into French for a website registered in Romania. It appeared with the photo on the Bulgarian National News website. Links to it appeared on Yahoo Lifestyle India and Yahoo Actualites France, and its appearance in the Washington Times was linked to several more websites that present round-ups of important stories. Brannonred reprinted it in his blog.
“We don’t know if all of this is unusual or not,” said the story’s writer, Patricia Ann Speelman. “We’ve never before tracked a story that we’ve sent to the AP. Maybe all of them get this kind of attention. But following this one has told us one thing for sure: everyone loves a love story.”
