The phrase "dull as dirt" may very well have originated from the 8:30 a.m. soils course they had with an elderly professor who liked to dim the lights and drone on for the entirety of the class time.

Granted, soil is an important and potentially interesting topic for an ag student – but that particular class likely trained them more in techniques for staying awake than anything else. He drank coffee; she took copious notes. And through it all, Courtney Schultz and J.D. Urish sat side-by-side, completely unaware that this painful prerequisite for their degrees was actually the start of something much more exciting. 

The exciting part wouldn’t come for a couple of years, of course. At the beginning, as sophomores at Kansas State University in Manhattan, Kansas, they were solely classmates who happened to be in the same lab group. But a casual friendship did form as time went on, given how common it was for students in the agriculture program to cross paths. 

An early sign of that friendship took the form of a hat that featured the name of her family’s farm and that Courtney gave to J.D. after he’d taken notice of her wearing one like it. Then, after he wore the hat to a cowboy church service and had someone recognize the name on it, he texted her with that bit of news. 

In the course of their history, though, what would ultimately be the most newsworthy aspect of this exchange was the fact that it was the first time their texts weren’t school-related. It was also a little foretaste of what was to come two years later — when, around Thanksgiving of their senior year, they had a stretch of time where they happened to see each other out with friends pretty much every weekend. 

After spending all that time together, Courtney found herself wondering whether there might be more than friendship between them — and at the very moment this was on her mind, a text from J.D. lit up her phone asking where she’d be that night. 

Although the words may have been casual on the surface, they were significant in that they clearly spoke to the fact he didn’t want to leave seeing her up to chance anymore. Soon, they spent their first one-on-one time, with her answering his cry for help in finishing an end-of-the-semester project. And their first official date followed not long after, at the Mexican restaurant La Fiesta. 

They dated for a few months before making their status as a couple official on February 1, 2015. And with that, it was about time to meet each other’s parents — which came with an especially memorable exchange when Courtney introduced J.D. to her dad at a restaurant off of I-70, partway between Manhattan and her hometown of Haviland in Central Kansas. 

Before they had a chance for other formalities, her dad greeted J.D. with the statement: “I was wondering when someone was going to answer that ad. I think I owe you $500.” Not missing a beat, J.D. replied that he thought the agreed-upon reward for courting Courtney was $1,000. 

In reality, though, he didn’t need financial incentive to picture a future with her. And by the time they both graduated from K-State in May 2015, there was no question in their minds that they’d continue their relationship, despite careers that took them in different directions. 

J.D. moved home to Scranton, Kansas, to take a job and continue to help on his family’s farm, while Courtney initially remained about an hour away in Manhattan. Her work in agriculture sales eventually had her moving all over, though, and her lack of roots made for some stressful conversations when it came to discussing their future — simply because the unknowns of her living situation made it difficult to make long-term plans.

Courtney + J.D.

- from classmates to kindred spirits -

By Erin Wisdom-Watson

“We never were wondering about
the whether.”

Still, by the time they’d been out of school for a year, they were ready to talk about marriage.

“We were kind of wondering what our plan was, as far as when. We never were wondering about the whether,” Courtney says.

And really, given the seasonal dictates of farm work, the “when” wasn’t all that hard to pinpoint, either. Not wanting to schedule a wedding during the busyness of planting or harvest (or during the dead of winter, for that matter), they knew marrying in the summer would make the most sense.

What wasn’t as obvious, though — at least in J.D.’s mind — was when to pop the question. At the end of July, he and Courtney went ring shopping, and he asked her parents’ permission to propose. But even with those necessities checked off his list — and with their wedding unofficially on the horizon for approximately a year out — he took his sweet time in asking her to marry him.

This was how it seemed to her, anyway, as she did her best to be patient. It didn’t help matters for either of them that their weekends were always busy, which made it difficult to carve out time for such a momentous occasion as a marriage proposal. But finally, on October 1, 2016, J.D. managed just that, without allowing Courtney to see it coming.

She was visiting that day and helped him with his work, driving a grain cart alongside his combine to allow him to dump corn as he harvested it. Knowing how late they’d likely be working, a proposal really was the last thing on her radar — even after he began demonstrating some strange behavior.

Once they’d finished in the field, J.D. returned the combine to its shed and Courtney followed in a flatbed pick-up. Then, instead of allowing her to stay in the driver’s seat and drop him off at the grain cart to drive it home, as well, he insisted she let him drive. Courtney resisted at first but eventually relented — only to find the grain cart wasn’t his intended destination, after all.

Rather, he drove past the the field where they’d been working to another one nearby that offered a nice view of the horizon and the sunset. Courtney, still not suspecting his true intentions, found his seemingly sudden interest in this particular corn somewhat strange. But she stood by as a dutiful girlfriend — and soon saw her days as a girlfriend were about over.

With J.D. down on one knee, asking her to marry him, she found she couldn’t stick with her plan to be a little coy and hesitate before responding. She gave an immediate “yes” — and with it, they were officially on their way to a wedding day.

That day will be July 8, 2017, when they’ll tie the knot in Courtney’s childhood church in Trousdale, Kansas. They look forward to celebrating this milestone with friends and family and then to honeymooning on a beach somewhere.

But they’re just as excited to return to their real life afterward. For Courtney, this will mean settling down where J.D. is. But given their shared vision and similar goals in life — including to eventually both be self-employed, him as a farmer and her with a cattle business — this doesn’t seem like too much of a sacrifice.

Plus, for them both, farm life is as much about fun as it is about work. And given that neither of them knows how to occupy free time in a city, it was a must to find a significant other who’s more inclined to spend a Saturday evening on a 4- wheeler than out on the town.

This commonality is just one element of what makes them click. They also share the same faith and the same coffee infatuation — not to mention similarly sarcastic senses of humor and the back-and-forth banter that’s a natural byproduct of those. 

Seeing now what a perfect match they turned out to be, they can’t be too surprised that their sophomore soils class ultimately led to something so significant. And although they both believe it was for the best that they didn’t get serious until later on, J.D. does admit to having a sense from the start that Courtney was something special. 

“I kind of had in the back of my mind that you would be a good one,” he tells her. “I kind of had you picked out a little bit.”

“We never were wondering
about the whether.”