Gretchen Bleiler Wedding
Bleiler aspired to compete in the Winter X Games from a very young age, and found her passion in snowboarding at age 11 (1992).She has been riding ever since and became professional in 1996. Among her accomplishments, she jump-started the invert revolution for female riders as the first to land a Crippler 540 in competition, and won more halfpipe competitions in 2003, 2005 and 2006 than any other female snowboarder. In the pre-Olympic season she won four of the five US Olympic halfpipe qualifiers and is also a three-time X Games gold medalist, most recently winning the superpipe at Winter X Games XII.
In 2003, she was a U.S. snowboard Grand Prix champion, a U.S. Open of snowboarding champion, and a Triple Crown of Snowboarding champion.
Bleiler, who missed qualifying for the 2002 Winter Olympics due to a tiebreaker, won a silver medal in the women’s halfpipe at the 2006 Winter Olympics in Turin, Italy.
Starting in 2007, Bleiler expanded her career into snowboard and outerwear design, through Oakley and K2 Snowboarding, designing her own signature outerwear line for Oakley, and participating in the K2 Alliance, which develops and tests women’s products, as well as working on the graphics for several K2 Boards. In 2008, she helped to create a new all-female invitational superpipe competition at Snowmass called the Snow Angels Invitational.
When she is not competing, Bleiler enjoys surfing, mountain biking, interior design and fashion. She is also active in several environmental organizations, including the Aspen Snomass Save Snow campaign, and stopglobalwarming.org.
Stam entered and won her first pageant at the age of 15. After winning the Teen Jackson County title she advanced to the Kentuckiana Pageant. She won the overall Kentuckiana title (a title won by several successful pageant winners) and advanced and won the national pageant and edging out first runner-up, Amber Seyer, who went on to compete in Miss Teen USA and Miss USA. According to Pageant.net, Stam made history as the first Hoosier to win a triple crown in the same pageant system starting at the local, state, and national levels. In 2009, she would tie her own record of a triple crown by winning at the local (Miss Duneland), state (Miss Indiana) and national (Miss America) level.
Winchell’s most successful TV show was Winchell-Mahoney Time (1965–1968), a highly-imaginative kids’ show written by his then wife, actress Nina Russel. Winchell played several onscreen characters, including Knucklehead Smiff’s father, Bonehead Smiff. He also played himself as friend and adult advisor to Mahoney and Smiff. He also created “Oswald,” a surreal character, by painting eyes and a nose on his chin, covering his face with a small costume, then having the camera inverted. The resulting pinheaded character seemed to have an immensely wide mouth and a highly mobile head. Winchell created this illusion by moving his chin back and forth.