Bob Schaible was comfortably watching football in his home at 9 p.m. Oct. 20 when his wife Christine called his name and then quickly collapsed onto the floor, hitting the coffee table on the way down. She had gone into cardiac arrest.

When Schaible figured out what happened, he frantically called 911 and was connected with dispatcher Melissa Gill.

Gill instructed Schaible to perform CPR on his wife, but Schaible hesitated. He had never learned CPR.

"I was pretty calm during the phone call. I do this all the time. I have to stay calm to keep the caller calm," said Gill of the six minutes on the line with Schaible.

Bob followed all of Gill's instructions as she guided him through each step. He struggled with tilting his wife's head back to check her mouth for food and to check her breathing, until Gill told him exactly where to place his hands.

Schaible could hear only a few small breaths, so Gill told him to place his hands on her chest and to pump twice a second. Gill kept encouraging him and updating him on the location of the ambulance. Schaible successfully administered CPR for six minutes, until EMS took over.

Christine, 64, was no longer breathing and was raced to East Cooper Regional Medical Center. She was moved to Roper Hospital after being stabilized and was discharged in eight days, alive and recovering well.

The Mount Pleasant couple credit Gill for saving Christine's life, and to express their thanks they visited her at the Charleston County dispatch center and presented her with flowers Wednesday, a rare treat for Gill, whose work usually goes unrecognized by the public. This ceremony was the first time that Gill and the Schaibles had talked since the 911 phone call.

"She let Bob give me my life back. This is so unreal for me," Schaible said.

Gill was visibly touched by the Schaibles' appreciation but was shocked at the amount of attention the call has generated.

"This is craziness. I never had this much craziness." Gill said she was just doing her job.

Mike Stanley, a fellow dispatcher at Gill's call center, was pleasantly surprised at the Schaibles' display of thanks. "I've been a dispatcher for 10 years and only four or five people have come up to the station to pay thanks."

According to the American Heart Association, 80 percent of heart attacks occur at home in front of family members, but only 6.4 percent survive because witnesses are not trained in CPR.

"I want to stress that people should know CPR. It saved my wife's life," Bob Schaible said.