From Deseret News archives:
Wedding a surprise to bride
It also was a surprise to his blushing bride.
Wait ...
Now, what'chu talkin' bout, Gary?
Last week, Coleman and his 22-year-old wife, Shannon Price, went on NBC's "The Today Show" to talk about their quiet mountaintop marriage in late August.
Price may have been the one to pop the question, Gary Coleman said, but he wanted to give her a wedding to remember.
"I didn't want to do a cheesy chapel wedding," he said to Al Roker, one of the show's hosts, "because it's cheesy. It doesn't mean anything."
Coleman also wanted to keep the nuptials on the down low.
No press and no strangers. So he looked into some helicopter tour packages.
Then he surprised her on her birthday Aug. 28 by sweeping her away for a small wedding in the Valley of Fire in Nevada.
"Nobody was around but the minister, preacher, the videographers, the photographer, the helicopter pilot and us," Coleman said on "Inside Edition" earlier this month.
Coleman and Price said they met on the set of "Church Ball," a LDS-genre movie produced in 2006 by Utah-based Halestorm Entertainment.
It was filmed in Utah County.
Price said she was impressed with how the 4-foot-8-inch actor carried himself.
"He was sweet and just acted normal," she told Roker. "He didn't act like a celebrity."
And even at 5 feet 7 inches, Price says she still looks up to him.
"(Height) doesn't really matter to me," she said on "Inside Edition." "He was 10 feet tall to me because he was sweet and I really liked his personality."
Coleman moved to Santaquin in 2005 and still resides there. He starred in "Diff'rent Strokes" from 1978 to 1984 as Arnold Jackson.
But his fame isn't what drew Price to Coleman.
"I've never seen 'Diff'rent Strokes,"' she told Roker. "I'm only 22."
E-mail: jdana@desnews.com
