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Tampa Couple Now 3rd Place In Contest For Dream Wedding

Photo from Courtney Dempsey

Courtney Dempsey, 33, and Gary Courtney, 37, are among 20 couples from across the nation vying for a $100,000 dream wedding.

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By KEITH MORELLI | The Tampa Tribune

Published: June 25, 2008

TAMPA - With just hours to go before the polls close, a Tampa couple with a touching engagement story have edged into third place in an ongoing contest for a $100,000 dream wedding, courtesy of Us magazine.

Courtney Dempsey, 33, and Gary Courtney, 37, are among 20 couples from across the nation vying for the prize. She is director of sales at Stumps Supper Club and associated businesses, and he works for Cigna, and yes, she knows that her name will be Courtney Courtney once they exchange their "I do's."

But that's only part of the charm of their story.

Four years ago, Dempsey was diagnosed with Stage 4 melanoma and given a year to live. Difficult treatments followed, and she's still on medication, but the cancer appears to be in remission.

All that incurred a pretty hefty medical debt, something that might have scared off some suitors, but not Courtney, who began dating Dempsey a year after her treatment started.

"He has been with me throughout the pain, sleepless nights, constant medication and side effects," she wrote in her outline for the contest, "as well as the $39,000 in debt I have incurred from having cancer. Most men would run, but he is one in a million."

"We have no secrets about her health," he said in an interview this week. "I didn't know exactly what I was getting myself into, but I know where I'm going from here."

The contest is run by Us magazine, and voting ends at midnight today.

The Courtney-Dempsey ticket is third and in the running to reach the next level. They have outlasted about 4,000 couples to get to this point.

The online contest is at http://www.usmagazine.com/wedding-2008-top-20, and that's where people can go to cast their ballots.

This morning the site showed the local couple had nearly 260,000 votes. With all the local publicity, they have garnered more than 170,000 votes in the past two days.

They overtook a couple from New Orleans but still trail by a wide margin couples from Arizona and Massachusetts.

Reporter Keith Morelli can be reached at (813) 259-7760 or kmorelli@tampatrib.com.

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