Wrestling diva a woman for all seasons

One glance at Terri Runnels, and you'd rightly assume that she's one of the most beautiful women around.

Get to know her a little better, and you'll quickly discover that she's got grace, charm and an engaging personality to go along with those looks.

Simply put, she's a woman for all seasons who can cook, clean, iron, and wear stilettos on her heels and wrestle.

Runnels, born Terri Lynne Boatright, enjoyed a 14-year career in the wrestling business that saw her appear in a number of varied roles. Six of those years were spent with the Ted Turner-owned World Championship Wrestling, while the next eight were with World Wrestling Entertainment (then known as the World Wrestling Federation). During her time in the business, she served as a diva, a manager and a TV host, along with occasionally taking some bumps in the ring as a worker.

That's a pretty tall order for someone who's barely over five feet tall and weighs around 100 pounds.

But the role this gorgeous diva has enjoyed the most is that of mother to her 14-year-old daughter, Dakota, who recently began her freshman year in high school.

In a way, Dakota herself has been a child of the wrestling business, having grown up around it. Her father (Terri's ex-husband) is Dustin Rhodes (Dustin Runnels), her grandfather is "American Dream" Dusty Rhodes (Virgil Runnels Jr.) and her uncle is current WWE star Cody Rhodes (Cody Runnels). Not a bad pedigree.

Despite her success in the wrestling business, Runnels has always made Dakota the centerpiece of her life, often taking her out on the road for wrestling engagements while making time to attend PTA meetings like any other devoted mom.

As a result, Dakota was wise beyond her years, says Runnels, who left WWE in 2004.

Best friends

Dakota, who already is taller than her petite mom, displays the innocent charm of a young teenager. She's polite, well mannered and reserved.

Terri and Dakota Runnels are not only mother and daughter. They're best friends.

"I love my child. We have a great relationship. I actually enjoy my child's company," says Runnels, who is working on a pair of books dealing with motherhood. "I enjoy banter with my child. She's smart and she's funny."

That's not to say, however, that she's slow to administer punishment and discipline when it's called for.

" We're friends until she crosses the line. And the minute she does ... I have my child healthfully scared of me," she half-heartedly jokes. "She's bigger than I am, but I have taken her down to the floor before and put her in a hold or two."

In other words: Don't let Mom's size fool you.

"I love you, but don't ever think, no matter how big you get, that you can take me down," she's had to warn on occasion.

But it's hard to imagine that happens very often.

"Unless she's making a choice that's not a good choice, we laugh and have a good time," says Runnels, who worked as a make-up artist at CNN before entering the wrestling business. "When she gives me the teenage (exasperated sound), that's what Mama doesn't allow. I don't allow disrespectfulness. She knows when she has gone overboard. When my voice changes, she knows something's up. It's good that she knows and respects when to stop."

The two have a rapport with one another that yields love and respect.

"She's quite a wonderful mom," says Dakota.

Little road warrior

Dakota was just an infant when her mom started taking her out on the road with her.

Runnels, who debuted in the WWF in 1996 as the sultry character Marlena, made her priorities clear to company owner Vince McMahon before she took the job.

"I'm a mom first, a wife second and I'll bust my butt for you third. But I won't do house shows. I'll do TVs and pay-per-views. That's it," she told her powerful boss. "I'm sure it held me back with him, but I'm sorry."

Just the travel got to be an ordeal. It often was more grueling than the actual wrestling part of it.

"I packed for me, I packed for Dakota, I packed for Marlena. I'd throw everything in the car, get the child in the car seat, handle Atlanta traffic, get to the airport, park, throw everything in, go through security. Finally we'd get to the plane and get in our seats."

Runnels laughs when describing how her little girl adapted to the rock-'n-roll lifestyle.

"The minute we'd sit down, the flight attendant asks what she can get us to drink. Very exasperated, I say, 'A Bloody Mary and an apple juice, please.' Without missing a beat, my little 3-year-old says, also in an exasperated tone, 'Make that two Bloody Marys.' She didn't know what a Bloody Mary or what alcohol was. She had no idea that my reasoning for having that Bloody Mary was that I wanted that little bit of decompression. All she knew was that she was also exasperated, and since Mommy was having a Bloody Mary, she wanted one too. The flight attendant and I just fell out."

Dakota grew up quickly.

"She was in airplanes and motels so much of the time," says Runnels. "Once when we got home, she asked, 'Mommy, I'd like to get some room service.'"

Terri had to quickly correct her.

"Pumpkin, I am room service, we're home now, we're not in a hotel."

Famous family

Dakota, now a bright-eyed, engaging high school freshman, says she sometimes thinks about those days on the road with her mom and wishes she could go back. She has good memories of being back in the dressing room "with all the girls" and a lot of the guys as well.

"She also had a million uncles" in the wrestling business, says Runnels.

"I was little, but I'd go back to it in a second. It was so much fun hanging out with everyone," says Dakota.

While she loved playing games in the dressing room with part-time baby-sitters such as Shawn Michaels, Dakota didn't especially like going out in the crowd because of the loud pyro used at the televised events.

"I used to hide under the table in Mom's dressing room," she giggles.

Her friends at school didn't know what to think.

"I'm kind of quiet when people first meet me. Once I start talking, and once you've been around me, I'm really not quiet at all."

Being the daughter of two famous wrestling stars, quite naturally Dakota was the target of many questions from kids at her school. After all, how many children have parents the likes of Marlena and Goldust, the mat alter egos of Terri and Dustin Runnels?

"We started talking about parents, I mentioned mine, and everyone started asking questions," she says.

"Oh my gosh, Dakota, that's so cool, Dakota, do you know so and so?" her curious classmates would routinely ask.

Dakota still watches wrestling on occasion, but usually when her uncle, Cody Rhodes, is on television.

"I watch it whenever my uncle Cody's on. I get all sad watching it because I remember being backstage. But I get to go to Wrestlemania every year, so that kind of makes up for it."

High school

Dakota recently made the transition from middle school to high school, and just a few months into her freshman year, it's so far, so good.

"The classes aren't as hard as I thought they'd be," she proudly exclaims. "I guess my other school prepared me for these classes. My eighth-grade graduating class had just 85 people. There's people everywhere at this school. That's probably been my biggest adjustment."

"I thought I would come home crying the first day, but it's actually been pretty fun so far," she adds.

There have been, however, some noticeable changes.

"The attitude and how people carry themselves is a lot different than my last school," says Dakota, illustrating her point by relating an incident that happened the previous day on her school bus.

"I was in some girl's seat on the bus that I had no clue about. She reached down, whispered in my ear and told me to get out. That was my first big scary high school experience."

And then there's math.

"Math is the subject that really trips me up. I'll ask Mom, and she'll say, 'Honey, I don't know how to do that.' But I think I'll eventually get the hang of it."

Dakota has a number of hobbies, but her favorite is riding horses. A regular in equestrian contests, she has a horse named "Candy Man" she received as a special gift when she was 2.

"He's getting kind of old now, so I'm begging Mom to get me a new horse," she says.

Wrestling casualty

Being the only child of a wrestling couple can have its disadvantages, says mom Terri, pointing to her six-year marriage with Dustin Runnels.

The wrestling business takes a toll on relationships as well, and Terri and Dustin's name was added to the long list of wrestling divorces in 1999. But Runnels doesn't blame wrestling for her divorce.

What particularly saddens her is the fact that Dakota "changed" following the divorce.

"At 5, she went from one stage to another. It breaks my heart. It almost makes me question if I should have stuck it out. I know I shouldn't have, but it still breaks my heart. I would love to have seen who she might be right now had she never had to go through that."

Terri pauses reflectively, and then relates what her daughter recently asked her.

"Mom, I'm starting to get back that spark, aren't I?"

"You are, Pumpkin," she assured her daughter.

Terri flashes a big smile when talking about how her daughter has persevered and blossomed. She's now performing in plays, and her personality is really beginning to emerge, she says.

"She recognizes that in herself, that for a while, she got very withdrawn, and her personality, instead of being vivacious and everything, it changed. She recently went through two weeks of going to camp. She was just hilarious in her roles there. She really had fun playing it to a tee. Dustin, I'm very proud to say, was at both of her performances."

Terri and Dustin

Her first marriage to Dustin Runnels isn't one of her favorite subjects, but it's not a topic she shies away from either. He's the father of her child, and his father, Dusty Rhodes, is Dakota's grandfather.

She and Dustin, who met in Atlanta while both were working for WCW, were married for six years. She says she loved Dustin with all her heart, but there were problems that go along with the business. Some of those problems revolved around Dustin's strained relationship with his dad.

Runnels says Dusty had a difficult time showing love to his son. He was constantly on the road while Dustin was growing up, and wasn't equipped to show the love his son apparently needed, she says. The relationship even played out in a WWE storyline that saw Dustin and Terri openly delve into the background of father and son.

At the WWE Hall of Fame induction ceremony in 2007, Dustin said, "All my life I've wanted to be just like my dad."

Things have since changed for the better, she says, and the two now have a better relationship. Dusty's a wonderful grandparent to Dakota, she says, and it's made him a much better father to the children from his second marriage.

There are still feelings that hurt, and she can't ignore them.

"Contrary to what Dustin and Dusty have done to me, that's Dakota's father and grandfather. It doesn't matter what I feel. I would rather think about my child as opposed to saying how I feel about them."

She's protective of her child, she says, and she can't forget about an incident that occurred several years after their marriage dissolved.

Dustin Runnels, who was working for TNA at the time, was charged with domestic abuse after being arrested following a dispute with his girlfriend at an Orlando hotel the pair was staying at. He was charged with misdemeanor battery and later ordered to have no contact with his girlfriend, maintain a separate residence and refrain from using alcohol or narcotics.

Daughter Dakota, unfortunately, witnessed the incident.

"It's one of those things where it's very dramatic as a mother when I pick up a collect call on the phone, and I hear this little voice weeping, 'Mommy, I'm cold and I'm hungry and I'm scared, and I'm at the hospital and Dad's in jail,'" says Terri. "My child is in Orlando. I could not get to my child fast enough. Thank God Ty (her current significant other) loves me, because I would have been an absolute wreck."

Terri remembers the ride home, holding her daughter in the back seat of the car while Ty drove, and her daughter asking her, 'Mommy, does my dad do drugs?' I told her, 'Dakota, have you ever heard me say a negative word about your dad?' She said, 'No ma'am.' I told her, 'Dad has set a new precedent. Therefore, unless you tell me you don't want to hear the truth, I will be honest with you and tell you what I know.'"

Runnels says her own family had urged her for years to be honest with her daughter.

"They didn't want me to hide everything from her. But my parents divorced when I was in the sixth grade, and my mother had the right to say terrible things about my dad. But she didn't say a negative word about him. One day I finally told her, 'Mom ... just say he's an ---hole. Just say it.' She told me she would not say that word, but she did say, 'Just what you said.' It was so funny. That was about as harsh as she could be."

"That was the example of what I wanted to set for my child," says Terri. "Over the course of the years, the majority of the time has been very cordial between us, unless I was trying to get child support. He does not pay child support. I'm totally by myself."

"Dakota was not allowed to be alone with him," she says. "He went from seeing her every other week, to weeks would go by and he wouldn't even see the child. So now she's seen this, and now she wonders why. It changed my child."

Runnels says she even bought her ex-husband's home on seven acres before it went into foreclosure. She wanted to turn around and sell it and use it in lieu of child support to help raise her child with. She says he then demanded an extra sum of cash, and she paid off his note.

Terri says the two maintain an amicable relationship for the sake of Dakota. There are rules around her home that apply to everyone.

"You don't yell, you don't curse, you don't do anything like that in my home. If you do that, you are not welcome in my home.

"I like her knowing that her mom and dad are there for her. I still love him (Dustin) as my child's father. I will always be there for him."

A painful life lesson

Runnels briefly married for a second time in 2002. But the marriage, to a life coach she met while under his counsel, hardly registered a blip on the radar screen. To say it bombed, she says, would be a gross understatement.

"Oh sweet Jesus. The relationship expert? The life coach? The one that was perfect?" she asks with more than a hint of sarcasm.

She says she only hopes the experience will serve as a lesson learned somewhere down the road.

"First of all, and I hope to God my mistakes have been lessons learned for my child, I really do. Please look at what mistakes I've made, and even though it hurt you at the time, please learn by it. Try not to be too angry at your mom for making that mistake, but learn from it."

Runnels says she only dated him for two weeks before he asked her to marry him.

"Six months later we were in a wedding," she sighs. "I had these inklings that some things were just not right. For instance ... he didn't own a home. That should have been a sign."

There were plenty of other signs she now says she should have picked up on more easily.

"Everything about him was the ocean, the beaches, dolphins and whales. My home, which I have decorated over the course of many years, is very elegant. My style is that everything is either hardwood floors or ceramic tile or granite, a lot of rich, deep colors, reds and browns and rich earth tones, animal prints. It's certainly not a feminine home. It has a masculine, rich decor.

"When I moved there (into her home), everything had peach carpet and turquoise wallpaper with flowers. Everything was just flowers and pink, and I don't do that. I literally just changed everything. The dude basically wanted to hang some dolphins in with my established decor."

She offered to give him a room as his office that he could decorate any way he saw fit.

"If you want to bring beach sand in there and make it like the ocean, rock on," she told him. "If you want to put a mural on the wall of whales and dolphins, that's awesome. He wanted to put a picture of this Maharishi who looked like Osama bin Laden on the end of the bed, so every morning when I woke up, I had to look at Osama bin Laden. I grew up Southern Baptist, and even though I'm nondenominational now, I don't do mix and match - a little bit of Buddhist, a little bit of that. Uh-uh."

In the meantime, she says, plans had been made and the wedding day was drawing near.

"It just all got away from me. By the time I realized what was going on, money had been spent, people had flown in, and holy crap!"

Runnels admits she had been smitten initially with beautiful writings he'd leave her. But she says those sentiments took a turn.

" He said words that had never been spoken to me before, and it was awful," she says. "It was my fault for assuming that I could know someone in such a short period of time."

In the beginning

Runnels, ironically enough, had sought his services after some prodding from her mother. Terri had been working extremely hard, juggling a number of responsibilities, and her mom had read about a life coach who worked in the area.

"I was busting my butt working so hard," she says.

Runnels' mom insisted that she see the life coach who was nationally syndicated and in Gainesville. She finally relented, telling her mom that it would be her Mother's Day present, and she booked eight sessions with the coach.

Runnels recalls the coach asking her who the perfect man would be.

"He was basically following this blueprint that I had given him, and following it to a tee."

The relationship, she says, turned abusive.

"I was scared. I'm a common-sense kind of person. I'm not perfect, but if I do something to hurt you, to disappoint you, just talk to me. We'll figure it out. I will apologize. But there is no sense in yelling and screaming. I just don't do that."

Runnels was just determined to make the wedding as perfect as it could be, and even prepared a special gift before their wedding day.

"I took one of his writings and had this composer put it to music and this singer do a recording of his writing to surprise him. I had it delivered to the room with champagne."

The night before the wedding, however, his surprise was bringing a number of people to her suite.

"Normally it's the girls, the bridesmaids, you do pedicures, you have a little wine, you giggle, whatever. He brought these people and he left with three of the guys. He left these women I'd never met alone with me. I'm having to amuse and entertain women I don't even know. It was so late, and the women couldn't go anywhere because all the guys had taken the cars and left."

She confronted him when he returned and told him, in a nice way, that it was unfair of him to have done that.

He flipped out, she says, and the commotion was overheard by Runnels' mom in the bride's suite.

"Are you sure you want to do this," her mom asked.

"Yes, Mom, I'm sure," Runnels replied.

No walk on the beach

The late pro wrestling star Ray "Boss Man" Traylor, who gave Terri away, asked her the same question the next day.

"He gave me that look. 'Sissy, are you sure you want to do this,' he asked.

"I'm sure," Runnels replied.

"OK, then, let's go," Traylor said.

Terri had always wanted to have an elegant church wedding, but the ceremony was held on the beach. She surprised the groom by having his dog, who was dying of cancer, in the wedding. She still marvels at the work her sister put into what she hoped would be a special day.

"My sister, who is amazing and just like Martha Stewart, had gathered up sand and seashells from the very place on the beach that we were going to be married. She had bought these clear, frosted Christmas ornaments, opened them up and put the sand in the shells. My colors were basically champagne, and she had these beautiful champagne satin ribbons tied, and on the actual ball in gold, she had written 'Love, Hope and Peace,' with our names and the dates. She had them in these little individual boxes with bows, and then had created this thing where it looked like these little gift boxes were a cake. It was unbelievable the time she took to create these things for me."

"That's the reason I said I'm going through this," says Runnels. "I couldn't say no. I was thinking of my poor sister."

The marriage lasted two months.

Special bond

One of the hardest things Terri Runnels has ever endured was the sudden death of her friend, Ray Traylor, who passed away in his home from a heart attack in September 2004. He was only 41.

The two were best friends and traveling partners, like brother and sister, and shared a special bond. It was all so surreal, she says, when she got news of his death.

"I started going through my house, just screaming, 'Why Ray?' It killed me because he had left three or four messages, and I had not returned his phone calls. I remembered walking through my house. A fan actually told me about it."

She then remembered the last words he told her before her wedding: "Let's go."

"All I wanted to say now was 'Don't go. Please come back.'"

It was difficult, but she spoke at his funeral.

"That was so hard to get up and talk about him. He was like my everything. He was my daddy, my brother, my friend, my girlfriend. He knew more about me than most of my girlfriends. We drove up and down the highways together ... just me and Ray. I give Angie (his widow) much credit because not many wives would allow their husband to travel down the road with some chick. She used to tell me, 'Terri, you know what, when he's with you I feel better. I know that you're going to keep him safe. He's not going to do anything stupid.'"

Their traveling routine, she says, was always the same.

"We hated to drive at night, so we would get back to the hotel after the show. He would come to my room. We'd order room service. He'd go to his room and call Angie. I'd call whoever my significant other was at the time. I'd put on my flannel pajamas, and we'd sit there and watch movies and just laugh. When I'd say I was tired, he'd say, 'OK, Sissy, I'll see you tomorrow.' It was like he was my everything. That was so hard to lose him."

Trying love again

Runnels is a ball of fire in the wrestling business and outside of it. She wears many hats and juggles an assortment of responsibilities near flawlessly.

That's not to say it's always been clear sailing for the stunning blonde.

Two marriages had all ended in divorce. Her current beau, with whom she's spent the past several years, is more than 15 years her junior.

He's a "whopping 28," she jokes, not hiding the fact that she recently turned 43.

The two met under unique circumstances in an unusual setting.

Several years ago Runnels became one of the first two WWE divas - along with Ivory (Lisa Moretti) - to entertain the troops in the Middle East. The two were joined by WWE performers John Bradshaw Layfield and Ron Simmons and an entourage of video and still photographers and public relations personnel.

What she remembers most vividly was the unbearable heat.

"The heat was just terrible," she says. "I hate the heat. It was like 137 during the day and would go down to 105 at night."

The routine was getting up at 6 a.m. and going from camp to camp to camp via a big coach (which was air-conditioned). The last camp of the day was at the Camp Virginia army post.

The job of the two divas on the WWE-sponsored trip, quite naturally, was to bring a little bit of home to a group of soldiers stationed in Kuwait. Runnels got over with the audience in, quite literally, a flash.

Ivory, she says, gave her the idea of wearing a skimpy "USA" bathing suit underneath a flight suit, and doing a flash for the grateful soldiers. Saving the best for last, Runnels kept the suit zipped up until the end. But it was so hot, she says, she couldn't breathe and became claustrophobic.

"How do these people do it?" was all she remembers thinking at the time. But it made her all the more aware of just how tough these troops were.

"I'm only here for six days," she thought. "All I had on was this long-sleeve flight suit. And they have all this stuff, the heavy work sacks, the guns, and they're working and moving all the time. I respect them so much."

The last thing on her mind was finding romance - in the middle of the desert.

Soldier boy

It all happened so suddenly, says Runnels, she still has a hard time believing that she could ever become so infatuated.

She recalls spotting a soldier who was sitting alone and who bore a striking resemblance to wrestler Kurt Angle.

"He seemed so reserved and quiet," she says.

Runnels remembers scores of soldiers taking to her. "Everyone," she says, "except that one soldier."

She was seven thousand miles away from home, and was doing her best to bring smiles to the faces of all the soldiers. She ate dinner at the mess hall with the troops and did a two-hour autograph signing.

Still, she says, the quiet and reserved soldier failed to come by even for an autograph.

Runnels later discovered that the soldier didn't even want to go to the show - despite the fact that two beautiful divas would be there.

"He just didn't want to go the show," she says. "He figured he was in a war mode mentally, so why would he want to go over and see beautiful women that he couldn't touch. He was stuck over there for a year, so why would he want to torture himself? He didn't."

A buddy had reminded the soldier that they were getting extra time off to go to the show, but he replied that he was going to use the time to catch up on sleep. He had to work the night shift.

The lieutenant colonel who ran Camp Virginia finally ordered him to go and to take his seat on the front row.

"He couldn't say no," says Runnels.

Runnels and her WWE colleagues were doing an autograph session. "Two hours had gone by, and this sucker was nowhere to be found," she says.

Exasperated by this time, Runnels asked herself, "What is his deal?"

Normally, she says, she's "old fashioned. "I will not chase a man. He has to pursue me. That's just the way I believe."

Finally, she recounts, the soldier came sauntering up to the autograph table shortly before the session ended, and she signed a picture for him. Runnels asked the soldier if he was busy.

"He said no, and I told him he was with me for the rest of the afternoon." Pressing further, she asked the soldier if his wife "would be mad." "All these guys are married," she told herself.

When he told her he didn't have a wife, she continued her interrogation. "Will your girlfriend get mad?" she asked.

"I don't have a girlfriend," he replied.

An emphatic "Yes!" she silently said to the answer she was hoping for.

The thoughts began to cascade in her mind, yet she didn't quite comprehend why at the time.

"Seven thousand miles away, a soldier boy, he's young," she thought. "Why would that make me happy? Like there's even going to be an us?"

She gave him a nice parting gift - red lips on his cheek.

"He went to dinner with the red lips and his friends were so envious," she laughs.

As the two later navigated in the desert through miserable heat, she now admits that she wanted to "kiss him so badly." She even joked to his lieutenant colonel that she wanted to take him back to her hotel, even though they weren't supposed to leave the base. The colonel, though, assured her he'd look the other way.

"I swear to you it wasn't a sexual feeling at all," she says. "I just felt that I wasn't supposed to leave this man. It felt like somebody was just ripping my heart out of my chest. I didn't know anything about him. I just couldn't explain it. I considered God, because I don't know what else it could have been."

She ended up getting his e-mail address. Naturally, the soldier felt this beautiful woman was just giving him her e-mail address to make him feel good, and that he'd most likely never hear from her again.

Runnels couldn't stand the thought of being away from him, so she logged on to her computer in her hotel room in Kuwait City, but she couldn't get online. In her flannel pajamas, she went down to the business center of the motel, at two o'clock in the morning. She sent the e-mail, which the soldier received in the middle of his overnight work shift, and he replied.

From that first night, they e-mailed constantly, and she didn't stop thinking about him. She eventually had to fly back to Los Angeles to do a live show.

"From the time I landed on U.S. soil, he called every single day until he got 14 days of R and R," she says.

Sports star

The soldier, Tyree Clowe, had been a high school wrestling and football star who had been ranked as one of the top running backs in Washington state prep history. He was offered full-ride scholarships in both, but chose football and ended up at the University of Iowa.

From the time he was 5, he had been heavily involved in sports, placing second and third in the nation in judo as a youngster. He added the more conventional sports such as basketball, football and wrestling once he got to junior high.

Clowe broke records in track in the long jump and went undefeated in wrestling in junior high. He focused more on wrestling and football and placed eighth in the state in wrestling his freshman year in the 189-pound division.

Clowe hurt his shoulder the next season, but returned his senior year to win state in the 215-pound division.

He guided his football team to a state title his junior year while breaking individual records along the way. With only four returning starters his senior season, the team didn't fare quite as well, but the 5-11, 210-pound bruising back, who ran a 4.4 40, broke even more records as colleges throughout the country bombarded him with offers.

"It was extremely exciting," says Clowe, who eventually added 30 pounds of bulk to his frame and improved his speed. "I pretty much was recruited by every major university. But I decided I wanted to stay closer to home and accepted an offer from the University of Washington. I took a recruiting trip out there, and I loved everything about it."

Before he ever got a chance to take the field, however, Washington head coach Jim Lambright, who had served as an assistant coach for the Huskies for 24 seasons before being elevated to head coach six years earlier, was relieved of his duties in January 1999. His staff was gone with him.

It was a recruit's nightmare.

"They called me and explained the situation, and said they were sorry," says Clowe.

New coach Rick Neuheisel had recruited Clowe at the University of Colorado, but dropped him when Clowe committed to the University of Washington. Neuheisel took all of Colorado's recruits with him, says Clowe, and dropped the Washington recruits.

"I was left high and dry on signing day and didn't know what to do. I ended up getting flown out to the University of Hawaii when June Jones from the Chargers went there to take over as head coach. They were 0-18 in the previous seasons, and I really didn't know about that ... a new coach and a losing program. BYU kept calling, but I'm not Mormon, and I didn't think I could handle that. There were others, but my heart had been set on Washington."

A somewhat reluctant Clowe ended up signing with the University of Iowa.

"I pretty much kicked myself in the butt the whole way through that. I guess I just was extremely disappointed. It was still Division I, but it wasn't the program I knew I should have been in. I just got caught up in going to parties and having fun with my newfound freedom."

With his primary focus being football and partying, his grades suffered, and he ended up losing his scholarship.

"My grades slipped too far down to where I couldn't pull them back up."

One year, and Clowe was gone, his football dreams shattered. It was a major wake-up call.

"I was kind of shocked. They really did let me go."

Clowe returned to his hometown and enrolled in a junior college without a football program. "It stunk just to go to school. I got to the point that I realized I wasn't up for school."

He got a call from an Army recruiter, and he signed a contract. Not a football contract, but a military one. He deployed to Kuwait in 2003.

A couple of months later, the war officially started, and Clowe and the troops crossed the border into Iraq.

'Just felt right'

Fast-forward seven months, and the soldier was meeting a woman he didn't know, in the unlikeliest of places.

With what appeared to be a love connection, the two made plans to meet on American soil.

Clowe, who had planned to go to Germany during his time off, changed his travel plans to Terri's home in Gainesville, Fla. It had been several months after their brief meeting in Kuwait.

Runnels admits there was some trepidation. Whether or not her daughter would approve of the relationship was her main consideration.

"Ty stayed in the guest room, and we did not touch in front of her," she says. "At that point we had never really touched. We learned a lot about each other over the course of a month. And we learned that we had very similar upbringings. Our religious beliefs were the same ... all of that. Still you don't know how it's going to be."

Both had their "outs" - just in case. Ty had friends in Orlando, and Terri had her own backup plans in case things didn't work out.

Ty missed his connection to Gainesville, and he had to drive five hours to Terri's home. He finally arrived at 3 in the morning. The two met in the walkway to her front door.

"If I'm lying I'm dying. It was like it always had been."

Clowe says any fears he might have had instantly vanished.

"From the minute I got here, everything seemed completely normal, and that's just the way it always was. From that point I realized just how great it was. It just felt right."

"I had this whole perception that she was probably just this famous person, and I had this stereotype about how famous people were," he adds. "But once we started talking, I found out how down to earth she was and just how many things we had in common. It was great."

Clowe went back overseas following the visit, finished up his year in Iraq and went to Fort Carson in Colorado Springs, Colo. He ended up spending two years and nine months in the Army.

Clowe, who worked as a generator mechanic, saw his share of action in the war-torn area.

"I'm just thankful that when we were there, we were actually fighting an army and not all these insurgents."

With Clowe back in the states, the two corresponded for months through e-mails and telephone conversations.

"Fortunately in the military you get a lot of four-day weekends. Practically ever four-day weekend, she'd either fly up to Colorado or I flew down to Florida," he says. "There was a lot traveling. It worked out well. I was in with a lot of sergeants, so we ended up turning a lot of four-day weekends into week vacations."

As soon as his stint was completed, he says, he was packed up and on the road to Florida. He's been there ever since.

Happy together

The two have been together for five years.

"We laugh about it now," Clowe says on how the two met.

He was barely 25 at the time, but he was mature for his age, says Runnels.

"He's like an older man. After the life I had with Dustin, I knew I would never want to be with anyone who yelled and cursed and screamed. That's just not an option. Ty never raises his voice. He's never said a curse word in front of me. I've never opened a door. I went from extreme to another."

Clowe says the age difference never comes into play.

"It really doesn't. It was like 'Wow' when I first found out, but that was probably it. It's never really come up since then."

Clowe is extremely laid back, sometimes to a fault, says Runnels.

"I wish he would communicate more, but that's a typical male thing. He expresses it in other ways."

Her most appealing qualities, he says, are "how loving and caring she is. She not only cares about her family, but she cares about everybody, and wants to make sure everyone is taken care off and doing well. She really has a huge heart."

They shoot guns, go fishing and both love to travel.

Clowe grew up in Washington with its crystal-clear lakes, majestic mountains and sprawling scenery. Runnels grew up in the more tropical climes of Florida.

"She hates the heat, and loves it up there when we go visit my family."

Clowe currently works at a state facility that houses criminals who were found mentally competent to stand trial.

He's been to a few Arena Football tryouts, but the timing never seemed to be right. "I'm getting too old for that sport," he says. "But I'm always trying to find something to keep me excited and keep that adrenaline going. I've even considered going into something like mixed martial arts."

A "good date" for the two is going out fishing in the afternoon and coming back and frying the fish, or perhaps an evening of karaoke, or simply dinner at a sushi bar and a movie afterwards.

And what if Terri got the urge to return to wrestling full-time?

"She doesn't want to do the wrestling part," says Clowe. "I'm sure she'd like to get back in a TV role. It would be nice. We're on the same wavelength. If she's happy doing it, I'm happy for her. If I'm happy doing something, she's happy for me. It works out very well."

Making up Larry

Before entering the world of wrestling, Runnels worked as a make-up artist at CNN, where she tried her best to make famous talk show host Larry King look his best on the air every evening.

After one of his heart attacks, however, she feels she may have given him the wrong answer when he asked her how he looked prior to going live. It was one of her first days on the job at the network's Washington, D.C., studio.

"I had no idea that the man just had a heart attack," she laughs. "I'm standing there doing his make-up. He's miked, and the control room is quite a ways away, but he's miked and they can hear everything being said. He asked me how I looked. The man honestly just looked horrible."

"But my mom taught me not to lie," she adds. Struggling for an answer, and wanting to be as honest as possible, she answered, "Larry, you look healthy."

"The people in the control room just fell out. The man is ghost-white, sickly and had lost 30 pounds. I told him he looked healthy. That was the only thing I could come up with. I didn't know what he looked like before the heart attack, so I had nothing to compare him to. It was hilarious."

Runnels worked there from 1985-91.

"With the exception of a couple of inappropriate things here and there, he was great to work for," she says of King.

Her move to Atlanta would be life changing. Now working in the same studios in which episodes of WCW were taped, it wasn't long before Terri was invited to be part of another Ted Turned-owned company. She bounced around from her daytime job to her new wrestling gig where she did make-up for wrestlers such as Sting and The Road Warriors.

"There at 4:30 a.m. working until 12:30 p.m. Drive to TVs. Sometimes I would get home just in time to shower and get back to the TVs," she says of the grueling schedule.

Booker Ole Anderson eventually invited Runnels to be a part of the WCW roster as a manager. Runnels came up with a name for her character, while WCW came up with the gimmick.

Debuting in 1990 as Alexandra York, her new role was that of a laptop-carrying accountant, with hair pulled back, glasses, heels and a business suit. Aptly enough, she led a faction dubbed The York Foundation, a consortium of wrestlers with finance-themed gimmicks. The group consisted of veteran performers Terrance Taylor (Terry Taylor), Richard Morton (Ricky Morton), Thomas Rich (Tommy Rich) and Michael Wallstreet (Mike Rotunda).

The femme fatale's wrestling career would shift into high gear when she debuted in Vince McMahon's World Wrestling Federation at the 1996 Royal Rumble as Marlena, a glamorous cigar-smoking, androgynous character that she concocted to complement her husband's eccentric, cross-dressing, bisexual character Goldust. With a flowing golden robe and gold face paint, Goldust wore a platinum blonde wig over his short platinum blond hair, with his appearance modeled after an Academy Award. The controversial performer appeared to be effeminate and loved to get into the minds of his foes with sexually suggestive interviews and antics in the ring.

The gold-outfitted Marlena was a take-off on the 1930s Hollywood star Marlene Dietrich, and it complemented the "old Hollywood" persona of Goldust. The elegant and sexy character was a far cry from the more innocent cheerleader type such as Sunny or the harder-edged Sherri Martel that made up the women's division at the time.

The pair captured the imagination of the wrestling audience, and their risque personas helped lay the foundation for the wildly popular Attitude Era years. The act was a big success, and also was a factor in the emergence of the company's diva division two years later.

"Divas were not called divas until Mama was there, and I will call myself Mama," says Runnels.

Terri was involved in a number of major storylines in the company following her gig as Marlena. She was just plain Terri for a while, and she also worked as part of the Pretty Mean Sisters, or PMS for short. She also served as the host of WWE's Excess show for several years.

After nearly eight years with WWE, she asked for and received her release from the company in March 2004. After traveling the world, Runnels felt it was time to focus on another role in her life, as full-time mom to Dakota.

Life is good

Runnels has a deep dedication and commitment to working with philanthropic causes throughout the world, including nonprofits such as the Make A Wish Foundation, Big Brothers Big Sisters, Boys and Girls Club of America, Children's Miracle Network, Hermie & Elliott Sadler Foundation, Autism Speaks and Fit Kids Marathon.

Particularly important to her is working with terminally ill children.

"Terri's true beauty comes from within, and I have been fortunate to have that positive light shine upon both me and my young son," said Julie Douglas of Taylor Fit For Kids and Fit Kids Marathon. "She puts forth 110 percent with all she does and that means those in her midst benefit 110 percent from her efforts. Always willing to lend a helping hand to anyone in need, she does so with patience, poise, confidence and with a smile on her face.

"Terri's work ethic is unmatched by most and her integrity is apparent in the decisions she makes and the projects for which she is involved. Terri would be an asset to any organization or project and she would contribute immensely to the success and vitality of such. It is an honor and a privilege to know Terri Runnels."

Life at home for the Runnels is good.

What's most important, says Terri, is that her daughter be happy and feel love around her.

Dakota, meanwhile, is your normal 14-year-old teenager.

"First I wanted to be a marine biologist, but then there was too much math that for me, because math is really not my favorite thing. Then I wanted to be an actress. I did a bunch of plays, so that's a possibility."

"And then I wanted to be fashion designer," she quickly adds. "Then I got into the whole horse-riding thing. So that's my own focus."

Would she want to follow the footsteps of her famous mom and dad?

"I've seen all the bumps and bruises," she says. "I'd have to think about that one."

While Mom's still on the road for occasional special appearances and autograph signings, she's much more a homebody than in the past.

Gone are the days of getting on an airplane every weekend and live-in nannies. Terri enjoys fixing breakfast and lunch for her daughter, taking her to school and being a mommy.

The two, says Dakota, love doing the "normal things" that mothers and daughters do.

"We'll grab a magazine, sit down, make fun of the stuff we don't like, choose the stuff we do like. We'll go out to lunch and go to movies. Her favorite thing to do is to make me scoot over on my bed and then she'll watch all the messages I type to my friends. She is very nosy," she laughs.

"We've been to a lot of great places and had a lot of great times," says Dakota. "Mom's awesome. I rag on her all the time, but she really is an awesome mom. I couldn't ask for a better one. All my friends love her. They all say she's so cool."

Dakota is also doing more things with her dad these days.

"For a while, I really didn't. I got to see him maybe once every week or two. But Mom and I agreed that I would go and stay with Dad for awhile. I stayed with him for two weeks. I came back this week. So we're going to alternate every two weeks. I'm happy about that."

"He's still kind of getting used to having a daughter in the house, and figuring out how to take care of me. But he's doing very well," she adds.

Dakota says she also likes "hanging out" with Ty.

"With Mom, I have to have manners, be very ladylike, be prim and proper ... With Ty I can watch movies like '300' and that kind of stuff," says the teen.

"'Why do you guys like those movies,' Mom will ask us. "She likes watching documentaries and she tries to get us to watch documentaries with her. The only movies I can't stand are scary movies. I don't mind the gore, but I can't watch really scary movies. Movies like 'It' made me forever scared of clowns. The first time I watched 'Scream' I had nightmares for a week. It was such a stupid movie, but I saw it right before Halloween."

"She's a really good kid and doesn't give me a hard time about anything," says Clowe. "It works out real well. We have a lot of fun together."

And how did she get the name "Dakota?"

"Mom and Dad agreed that if I were a boy, Mom would get (choose) my first name and Dad would get my middle name. If I were a girl, Dad would get my first name and Mom would get my middle name. So Dad got to pick my first name. Dad was into the Southwestern-type thing."

She admits she doesn't know which part of Dakota.

"I guess I'm East Dakota," she giggles.

Meanwhile, Terri's getting to spend more time with her daughter, and she's loving every minute of it.

"Everything's been great," says Runnels, as proud a mother as there ever was.

Reach Mike Mooneyham at (843) 937-5517 or mooneyham@postandcourier.com. For wrestling updates during the week, call The Post and Courier Info Line at (843) 937-6000, ext. 3090.