‘The Pioneer Woman’ Ree Drummond Explains Why Ladd Drummond Waited 4 Months to Call Her

‘The Pioneer Woman’ Ree Drummond Explains Why Ladd Drummond Waited 4 Months to Call Her

The Pioneer Woman star Ree Drummond often mentions her husband, Ladd, on social media. She recently posted a message on Instagram, celebrating their wedding anniversary. Their relationship seems hot and heavy now, but Ree reveals they got off to a slow start. They didn’t make plans for their first date until four months after they met. The Food Network cook reveals why.

How Ree and Ladd Drummond met

Ree and Ladd Drummond first met at a bar. In her book Black Heels to Tractor Wheels, Ree says she was out for a night of fun with her friends when she spotted Ladd from across the room. She compares their meeting to a scene from West Side Story.

We talked into the night, the room blurring around us as it had done at the dance in West Side Story when Tony and Maria first saw each other across a crowd of people. My friends giggled and sipped wine at the table where I’d abandoned them earlier in the night, oblivious to the fact that their redheaded amiga had just been struck by a lightning bolt.

Ree Drummond, Black Heels to Tractor Wheels

‘The Pioneer Woman’ star kept busy

Ree was hoping she would hear back from Ladd the next day or even the next week, but her phone didn’t ring. Four months passed before they spoke again. Ree kept busy during the time between meeting Ladd and going on their first date. She went on dates with other men, but none of those relationships seemed to go far.

Ree says another way she kept busy was by having dinner with her grandmother, Ga-Ga, and her friends. They had dinner every Tuesday, so she would join them. Ree was a vegetarian at the time, so she says her first outing with them was “brutal.”

My first dinner with Ga-Ga, Ruthie, Delphia, and Dorothy turned out to be grueling and brutal; I ordered vegetarian side dishes of mashed potatoes and canned green beans and watched the ladies eat horrible things like liver and onions, chicken fried steak, and meat loaf as they talked about the upcoming banquet at the church, how much the Retired Teachers’ bake sale had raised, and how much the neighborhood kids had grown.

Then they’d all split two pieces of pie—always rhubarb and lemon meringue—while I ordered another Diet Coke and looked restlessly at my watch. I couldn’t believe how important they considered all of this to be.

Ree Drummond, Black Heels to Tractor Wheels

Why Ladd Drummond waited four months to call Ree Drummond

Ree finally heard back from Ladd and they started dating seriously. A few months into their courtship, Ree finally had the courage to ask Ladd why he waited so long to reach out. He admitted he was seeing another woman. He also had to attend to obligations out of town. Ladd continued by saying he wanted to properly end things with the other woman before he asked Ree on a date. Ladd told Ree he did like her, and he liked that she was different from other women he had dated.

“I stopped short of interrogating him further, of asking him to specify what he meant by ‘different,’” wrote Ree. “And it didn’t take much imagination to figure it out. As he drove me around his familiar homeland, it was obvious what he would have considered ‘different’ about me. I didn’t know anything about the country.”

Follow Sheiresa Ngo on Twitter.