Where's my cowboy?

I must admit, I'm a sucker for a good love story.  Well, who isn't really?  I guess there are some.  It's not that I have expectations-I much more pragmatic and realistic-but deep down, when it comes to observing other people, I'm a hopeless, mushy romantic soul. 

At my last store over a year ago now, we were having an author come to do a signing.  We hadn't really heard of her at our store until her uber dedicated fans started calling and asking all about the event weeks before the scheduled date.  And they were so excited and beside themselves that I just had to know what crazy wonderfulness I was so ignorant of up to this point. I mean, she was a cookbook author-and I love me some cookbooks and cooking and cookware and cooking utensils and cooking appliances, and I think we all get the idea.  And this is when I realized that life was utterly unfair.  This author was living a dream that most women would give anything to have. Besides being this successful blogger, cookbook author, website builder wonder woman-she also had the perfect cowboy husband.  A real life cowboy. A cowboy.  It may be a cliche, but down deep inside of everyone of us straight women and some gay, is the cowboy fantasy.  A gentleman.  A person with values and roots and chivalry.  The stetson, the wranglers, the horse-it's there somewhere-however irrational for those of us who live in cities where the only horses pull tourist along a paved concrete road in a carriage. 
The woman who is living the dream for us all so we can live vicariously through her.
The Pioneer Woman. 
And now-NOW-she has a non-cookbook out with her and her Marlboro Man's love story!  Which most of us who have visited her site have read a lot-but she's added new stuff into the courtship and then she's added their first year of marriage!  And I thought I would just skim along, refresh myself and get to the marriage part quickly, but it was not to be-I am sucked into this real life romance novel like I didn't read almost all of it over 3 nights before she came to my store over a year ago.  And I cannot stop!  Well, i can for as long as it takes to type this little post and let my nook charge up a little.
I never took myself for this mushy romantic girly girl.  I was always one of the guys. Tough, willing to get dirty, a little compartamentalized (if that's how that's spelled); but this book has turned me into a teenage girl with stars in her eyes, wishing she grew up in the middle of nowhere with hot cowboys (because I'm sure all the real ones are actually hot...) and could admire thei physique in wranglers and chaps.
I've said that I don't see myself getting married; and now I know that's probably truer; because I've yet to see a real cowboy in Chicago and I don't think I could even contemplate the thought of marriage unless it was to a cowboy. 
Check out http://www.thepioneerwoman.com/
It's absolutely awesome.