Eager high school student sets up football coach with single aunt
When Meranda Darby was a junior at North Valleys High School, she used to help out in the weight room. As part of that, she spent time with Coach Ty Gregg, North Valley’s then-head football coach. One day, Meranda and Ty were having a conversation about her future after high school during which she learned the coach was single.
Immediately she was struck with a brilliant idea that almost sounds like the plot of a 1990s rom-com–find Ty a girlfriend. In this case, she thought of her also-single aunt, Tammy.
“We met after Meranda discovered that I was single and suggested that I should meet her aunt,” Ty remembers. “I suggested that her aunt should email me if she was interested.”
A little nudging from Meranda and the rest of her family at a Mother’s Day event led her aunt Tammy to email Ty. A series of honest email exchanges led the two to set up a date, using tickets Tammy had to an LMFAO concert at the Grand Sierra Resort (who Ty admittedly thought were just a couple of DJs at the time). Tammy brought a friend along, fully ready to bail if things didn’t go well.
“We had never seen each other in person,” Ty says. “We weren’t on Facebook in 2009.”
Luckily for both Tammy and Ty, he wasn’t the dud she feared he might be.
The courtship happened pretty quickly. After hitting it off on their first date, the couple made their relationship exclusive immediately. After nine months of blissful dating, they got engaged on a weekend trip to Sacramento.
After saying “I do” in July of 2010, the couple started working toward having a family. Parenthood didn’t happen as seamlessly as the rest of their relationship, but after successful IVF treatments, Ty and Tammy welcomed their daughter in September 2012. For Tammy, it was a must, and though Ty had never planned on having more children–he has three now-adult children from his previous marriage–he told Tammy early on he would be thrilled to have another child with the right person. That right person just so happened to be her.
Now, 12 years later, life looks pretty simple for the Greggs. Ty is a teacher and assistant football coach at Damonte Ranch High School and Tammy is an administrator at the Nevada Center for Reproductive Medicine. Together, they spend their free time enjoying family outings and cheering on their favorite sports teams, often alongside Meranda and her family, which includes children around the same age.
Meranda also gets a kick out of taking credit for their happily-ever-after—rightfully so.
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