Love Conquers All: Trina & Greg Queen's Story of Love & Adversity

“We have no secret—it’s just love.”

Greg and Trina Queen have proven time and time again that if it’s meant to be, it’ll be. Overcoming tragedy, coming back to each other time and time again, their love has truly conquered it all.

Trina and Greg’s love story began before they had even met one another, with her cousin teasing Trina about the “little redheaded boy” that lived down the street from her cousin.

Trina can even recall the first time she laid eyes on Greg when she was trick-or-treating at his house as a child.

“I remember trying to peak and see what that redheaded boy looked like,” she laughed.

Though it began as good-humored teasing, it had obviously made a lasting impression on Trina, as she recalls crushing on Greg after a friend invited her to go see him perform as lead guitarist in a heavy metal band he was in.

“I thought he was so cool,” she said. After that, when Trina would go visit her cousin’s house, she would watch for Greg to ride up and down the street on his dirt bike.

The pair went on to date as teenagers— “if you can call it that at that age,” Greg teased—when Trina was 14 and Greg was 15. Greg and Trina’s first date was to the movie theater and then to see a band playing downtown. The pair even went to a school dance together in junior high. Their courtship only lasted a few months at the time, though.

“I always had a secret crush on him, but I didn’t want him to know that, because you know how boys are, if they know you like them, they won’t have anything to do with you,” Trina said. “So, I hid my crush, and we stayed friends.”

Though they remained acquaintances, the pair had finally come back together when they were around 18 years old and then tragedy struck.

Trina was at the Laurel County Homecoming in August of 1993 when she heard the devastating news that Greg had been severely hurt in a work accident, an accident that left him paralyzed from mid-chest down.

“I just woke up in the hospital and I couldn’t move, I had all these tubes attached to me and I could hardly see, everything was really blurry,” Greg said. “That’s really the first memory I had; I woke up and didn’t know what had happened.”

Over the next several weeks, Greg spent time in the hospital and at a rehabilitation center recovering from his injuries. Trina would go and visit him from time to time, until Greg was sent to a rehabilitation facility in Colorado where he learned how to live his life as a paraplegic, even learning how to drive a car and how to snow ski. During that time, the pair kept in touch by writing letters back and forth.

Though his life had been completely changed by his accident, Greg never let his injury define him and believes he has done more in his lifetime since his accident than he did before. After returning home from Colorado, Greg began competing in wheelchair basketball, wheelchair racing and handcycle racing. He raced competitively for many years, racing all over the country and even in other countries, including London, England where he won gold and silver medals in the World Wheelchair Games. All the while, the pair kept in contact, with Trina even traveling to see Greg compete in many races.

“I don’t see anything different about me,” he said. “If something happens to you, you just move on and keep going.”

“Not everybody has that mentality,” Trina said. “I mean there are things you have to do differently, but if he wants to do something, he finds a way to do it.”

A couple of years after his accident, Greg went to school in Florida where he became a certified Harley-Davidson mechanic. After returning home, he opened his own Harley-Davidson motorcycle repair shop in 1995 after his desire to get back into riding, building his own custom adaptable trike that would allow him to ride a motorcycle again.

Though they remained friends, the pair didn’t seriously date again until the fall of 1997 when Trina was 21 and Greg was 22. Dating for two years, before their engagement in August 1999, six years from the day of his tragic accident.

Trina recalls Greg buying black duct tape at the store the night before but didn’t think anything of it at the time. The next day, Greg asked Trina to accompany him on a flight over London where the pilot told Trina to look out into a field where some guys were working below. As the plane got closer to the ground, Trina was shocked to see those men holding a banner with the words “marry me” in black duct tape across it.

“He says my mouth just flew open, he still talks about it to this day,” Trina said. And after the initial shock, of course, she said “yes.”

Trina later asked Greg why he had chosen that day of all days to ask her to marry him to which he replied, “I had to start my life over six years ago today, and now I want to start it over again with you.”

And so, they did, as the couple married on January 1, 2000, at the start of the new millennium in front of 250 of their friends and family.

Greg and Trina have built a beautiful life together. They have since had two children, Braden and Tori, who are now 20 and 15 respectively, and just recently celebrated their 25th wedding anniversary.

Greg continues to repair Harley-Davidson’s and build custom motorcycles at his shop, Queen’s Custom Cycles in Lily, which he has been doing for 30 years now, while Trina helps out at her family’s restaurant, Mama Rosa’s in London.

“We came out of the tragedy together and now live as normal of a life as possible,” Trina said, although Greg has had a couple more near death experiences over the years, including an ATV accident in 2013 and a shoulder injury that has kept him from racing in the last few years.

All in all, the couple has stuck beside one another and despite all the obstacles that life has thrown at them, they have come out stronger.

“We have ups and downs, it’s not all a bed of roses but it’s life,” Trina said. “We just love each other and get through it together.”