LOVE BEHIND THE MASK

Scales and Hodson will wed this spring

STORY BY BETSY ILER PHOTOS COURTESY OF BROCK HODSON

“I hope she’s as beautiful under the mask,” Ohio’s Brock Hodson thought the first time he saw Alexander City native Hayden Scales peering at him over a desk at the entrance to Russell Medical.

A masked Scales was taking temperatures and screening hospital employees for COVID-19, and Hodson, an athletic trainer at Total Fitness, was checking in for his shift. About a week later, he saw her again.

“I was training for a half marathon and injured my knee, just overworked it, and my boss told me I probably should go have it looked at,” Scales said. “So I went in to have him look at it and give me some tips to help it heal.”

Like Hodson, Scales was immediately attracted to her trainer and looked forward to actually seeing his face. That day came shortly after their meeting, as during another training session, they mutually agreed that the masks could be removed.

“It was a very weird feeling,” Hodson admitted, but to his relief and delight, the woman behind the mask was even more beautiful than he had hoped.

Hodson grew up in Ohio, and as long as he could remember, he had intended to move to the South upon his college graduation.

“I wanted to live south of Charlotte,” he said.

He took a job at Russell Medical right out of college and had been in Alexander City only a short time before meeting Scales.

The couple planned their first date on a golf course, but when that did not work out, they took a

Iwalk through Russell Forest. Scales toured her new friend around the lake and showed him all of her favorite places in the area where she grew up. “We ate at Kowaliga,” she remembered. It only made sense, then, that the lake played an important part in Hodson’s proposal plans early last fall. Originally, he planned to propose on the golf course, but like the couple’s first date there, that did not work out. Instead, he planned a sunrise coffee cruise and let Scales’ best friend, and her sister, Ryley, in Hodson secretly turned on his cellphone's video camera to capture the proposal on the secret. With the sun coming up just as the boat cruised by Kowaliga, the site of their first date, Hodson pretended to take a photo of the morning sky. Instead, he turned on the video recording and propped his phone up in a cup holder to capture Scales’ reaction when he got down on one knee and popped the question. “I knew it was coming eventually, but I was really surprised when he did it. I had thought it was just going to be a boat day,” Scales said. When they arrived at the dock later that morning, Ryley snapped a photo of the newly engaged couple, and they celebrated on the dock with champagne. Still determined to celebrate on the golf course, the pair will be married at Willow Point Golf and Country Club on June 4 with lots of Scales’ favorite flower, blue hydrangeas, in attendance. Masks will be optional.