Couple lives true Disney love story
They were Disney coworkers, although they had never met since they were based in different cities.
Whenever Christopher Copeland was stuck on a question working with vacationers on the reservations telephone line, Joy from the employee help desk usually guided him.
Their conversations were strictly professional, but Copeland sometimes threw in a cheesy joke to make her laugh. Then he had to move on to the next call.
Still, he wondered what it would be like to meet her. She seemed so nice, he thought, after their handful of conversations every week that went on for nearly two years.
Their talks during the late shift, however brief, “made the night go by and end the day with a pleasant call,” she recalled.
Finally in 2004, Copeland, who was based in Tampa, made his way to Orlando to meet his colleagues in person.
He recognized her when she returned lunch.
“I heard her voice from the other side of the cubicle wall,” Copeland said. “That’s all I knew for two years was her voice.”
She looked up at him — literally. She hadn’t known he is 6-feet, 5-inches tall. She’s 5-foot-2.
About two weeks later, they went on their first date to Epcot.
“We felt like we knew each other already,” Copeland said.
Five months after meeting for the first time, Copeland devised a scheme for the couple to get handpicked as extras in the Indiana Jones Epic Stunt Spectacular at Hollywood Studios. He knelt down and proposed to her during the show while their loved ones watched in the audience.
“I remember it well. It brought down the whole house down,” said George Hendrickson, who has worked at the Studios for voice from the past 20 years and helped Copeland set up the surprise.
Hendrickson said he hadn’t seen a proposal at the stunt show “before or since.”
Copeland even got a keepsake. The Indiana Jones actor gave him his hat, which made a cameo at the Copelands’ wedding in 2006.
Their unusual love story, still going strong some 13 years later, is one they often retell. Copeland, 45, and his wife, 46, live in Davenport and still work at Disney.
It’s certainly not unique for couples to meet at work, including at Disney, one of the largest employers in Orlando.
“Did you meet your spouse at Disney?” somebody recently wrote on social media in a Facebook group for Disney employees who worked there during the 1970s. It drew more than 170 comments as people shared stories about meeting their significant others at the Monorail, the Contemporary Resort and other places.
Last week at Disney, Copeland, now a VIP tour guide, explained the personal significance of the Indiana Jones show while his group waited for it to begin.
Sometimes, Joy Copeland, now a merchandise coordinator, chats with a
new co-worker who inevitably asks how she met her husband.
“They’re waiting for a typical, ‘Oh we met online,’ ” he said.
“They’re amazed,” she said. just