Ellie Day, wife of golfer Jason Day, enjoys life on PGA Tour

Editor's Note: This article originally was published in August 2011 and is being republished so it continues to be available on our new website.

LUCAS -- The top of Ellie (Harvey) Day's wedding cake is a keepsake, and a reminder that life doesn't always follow the recipe.

A cowgirl, boot deep in icing, was always destined to be on top of the cake. But never in her wildest dreams did she imagine a pro golfer being plopped down beside her--at the altar or on a four-tier, rainbow-colored dessert.

"I definitely haven't changed," Ellie said, "even though my life has dramatically."

That will happen when your husband is Jason Day, runner-up in two of this year's four major golf tournaments: the Masters and the U.S. Open.

When she met Jason in 2005, Ellie didn't instantly know he was the man she would marry. They didn't even go on their first date until two years later. But their relationship started to deepen about the same time his career started to soar.

Now they are probably the most talked about young couple on the PGA tour -- the 25-year-old filly from small-town Lucas and the 23-year-old, fast-rising golfer from Australia.

"It's so funny, because Ellie really is a country girl at heart," said Lucy Sanchez Knapp, her mother. "I always knew she'd marry someone famous, but I thought it would be a country singer. I always pictured her with Brad Paisley, but Jason is country of sorts. He likes his cowboy boots."

Besides, Jason has probably had a better year than Paisley.

Despite failing to make the cut in the recent PGA Tournament, Jason has made $3.1 million this year. He's had Top-10 finishes in 10 of his last 16 starts. His 8- under at the U.S. Open would have been good enough to win or earn a playoff in all but six Opens since 1948.

There practically every step of the way has been Ellie. She's become known for walking every hole with her husband.

"I like to see what's going on, but it's become more difficult because the (galleries) are bigger and it's frustrating because I can't see," Ellie said. "It's good for him because he's always scanning the crowd for me. Obviously, he could do well without me, but it's such a routine now."

And the 2004 Lucas High School grad is more in tune with what's going on. "I caught on quickly," she said. "At first I was such an airhead, I didn't know anything. I learned a ton. Random people will ask how Jason's doing and I know enough what's going on, or if his reaction is good or bad.

"But I don't want to know what club, specifically, he's using. I'll never want to ask, 'Why'd you do that? Why'd you use that club?' "

Hitting the road

The Days travel to most tournaments in their motor home with their dachshunds, Lola and Charlie. A miniature of Lola, the only wiener dog they had when they got married, also was on top of the wedding cake.

True to Ellie's roots, the Days got hitched at a barn in Bellville in October 2009. The wedding album includes a photo of Ellie with her bridal party astride a John Deere.

"I'm definitely staying country," said Ellie, whose claim to fame before marrying Jason was finishing second in an FFA national dairy foods competition when she was a high school junior. "Growing up in Lucas, I thought Mansfield was the big city. I loved it. When we have kids, I can definitely see them in 4-H."

Ellie had to compromise with Jason when it came to buying a house in Westerville to be closer to her family. She wanted about 60 acres. They settled on five.

"My dream of having a farm was shattered," she joked.

The Days divide their time between here and another house in Fort Worth, Texas. Ellie is pursuing an online degree in business with hopes of someday opening a beauty salon. Jason still has a full slate of events to play, including the PGA playoffs and three tournaments back home in Australia in November.

"People have such a skewed view of the tour," Ellie said. "Our life is very different from someone else, but it's sooo boring. This story is going to be so lame. I'm going to school online or doing homework or watching Jason or doing the laundry or cooking, or we're watching movies.

"After four years of being together 24-7, you'd think we'd hate each other. But it's going well and time is definitely going fast."

Slow start

Ellie was 19, attending beauty school and working nights at Mavis Winkle's Irish Pub in Twinsburg when she met super shy 17-year-old Jason. He walked into the restaurant with Colin Swanton, his coach and caddy. Swanton was helping a friend start a golf academy in Twinsburg, so the pub become a regular stop for the coach and his callow prodigy.

At first, Jason was afraid to talk to her. It took a year for him to even get up the nerve to text her.

Their romance took off the week of a 2007 Nationwide Tour event in Cleveland. She went to watch the final round and he ended up winning.

The following weekend, she drove to Columbus for a tournament and their first date -- dinner at Applebee's and a horror movie, with Swanton as a third wheel. Six months later, she moved in with Jason in Orlando, Fla.

"Of course, my reaction was not good," said Tom Harvey, Ellie's dad and longtime junior high and high school basketball and baseball coach. "I'd been around jocks my whole life. My buddy, Tim Seder, played for the Cowboys, and he told me that the groupies who hang around players are legendary.

"I had my dad hat on and cautioned her. Strike one, he's a jock. Strike two, he's a professional. And strike three, he's from Australia. I exaggerated it as much as I could, but (Ellie) blew her old man off. I told her to go in with eyes wide open."

This was before Tiger Woods shocked the world with his illicit affairs. "What's funny is the guy who cuts my hair occasionally is a big Tiger fan," Harvey said. "When I told him my daughter was dating a golfer, he said, 'Don't worry. Golfers are different. They like to settle down; they're much more domesticated.'

"Then six weeks later, the Tiger story broke and I couldn't wait to get a haircut."

Harvey, a local insurance representative, can laugh about it now. He can't imagine a better son-in-law, even if Jason won't spring for a new set of clubs for his father-in-law.

"He tells me, 'Get better and I'll upgrade your clubs,'"Harvey said. "When people ask my handicap, I tell them it's me."

Harvey, often part of Jason's galleries, calls himself a good luck charm.

"It's keeping a pasty old white man out of trouble," he laughed. "I don't mind admitting I was wrong (about him.) We have a real good relationship; he's very down to earth. He's a good young man and I've grown fond of him."

Knapp, who runs a custom slipcover business in Lucas, feels the same way about her son-in-law.

"It didn't hit me that he was a professional athlete; I just had the normal motherly concerns," she said. "I had very little interest in golf. We tried it once as a family and it was a comedy of errors. Now I enjoy watching it.

"It's just so surreal when we're around Jason. He's so unassuming, nice and quiet. When I said to Jason, 'I can't believe you were second in the U.S. Open!' he just smiled. You'd never know he's a professional athlete."

Jason is no dummy. When he was trying to convince Ellie to move in with him, he invited her to the Sony Open -- in Hawaii.

"The temperature here (in Ohio) at the time was minus-something and my parking lot was iced over. I told myself, 'I think I can do this,' " she said. "When I flew back to Ohio, I cried the whole way. So I quit my job and packed my bags."

Ellie didn't blame her dad for sending up red flags.

"Had he not been worried, he wouldn't have been a very good dad," she said. "I didn't have TV or Internet in my apartment. There was a total disconnect. I didn't know anything about golf. It was the furthest thing from my mind. But I thought (Jason) was cute."

Now she thinks her dad and Jason together is cute.

"My dad is ultra-conservative, but he never judged me; he let everything play out," Ellie said. "When we got engaged, he was a lot happier because we put a ring on it. Now the two of them are so close it's ridiculous."

Golf's top couple?

The Days seem to have become the favorite tour couple of reporters and photographers. Ellie captured headlines in the Atlanta Journal-Constitution during their first time at the Masters in April.

"I'm afraid to touch the grass because it's so perfect," she said in the AJC. "I didn't know if I could sit on it."

A Dallas Morning News photographer captured the couple embracing near the 18th green after Jason claimed $1.1 million for winning the 2010 Byron Nelson Championship.

They also were a hit with photographers at this year's PGA Tour Wives event, where Jason caddied for Ellie. She pulled off the Payne Stewart look in her pageboy cap and argyle socks.

"I'm awful (as a golfer); I can't describe how bad I am," Ellie said. "Jason was asked on a TV interview about the best advice he gave me. It was 'Take up tennis.'

"I played softball and volleyball in high school, but I was always nervous in front of people, just a wreck. I hate cameras; they make me nervous. When they were following us around (at the wives' event), I was just mortified. Jason was trying to help me and it was hysterical. Playing nine holes seemed like an eternity. By the end, I was letting him hit all my shots."

Jason is 10th on the PGA Tour money list, but Ellie has him beat. She's fourth on the "honey" list.

In the so-called smokin' hot golfer wives rankings on AthleteWives.com -- yes, there is such a website -- Ellie is No. 4 behind tennis star Ana Ivanovic (girlfriend of fellow Aussie Adam Scott), Tiger's ex Elin Nordegren and Amy Mickelson.

In a recent column, ESPN's Rick Reilly, who has enough national sportswriting awards to fill the Ohio Stadium press box, called Ellie "hotter than a Venus oven."

Urbandictionary.com, whatever that is, said Ellie is "the best reason to watch golf these days."

Doesn't sound like someone who should be camera shy.

"My brother (Clark) and dad must be seriously weirded out by it," Ellie said. "It's strange how people know who you are. It's not like I put myself out there. It just opens the door for people to be mean-slash-weird."

That's why this country girl is perfectly content to surround herself with family and friends.

"By the time Jason was a big name, we knew him personally, so it was a bigger deal to others than it was to us," said Lucas native and resident Bethany Heinberger, Ellie's maid of honor. "And Ellie's so down to earth. Oh, my gosh, she's no different. With her being only 45 minutes away, we can hang out and sit around her house and go to concerts together."

Bridesmaid April Shaffner grew up in Mansfield and has known Ellie since they attended vacation Bible school together. Now they're almost neighbors, with Shaffner just down the road in Grove City.

"I know she's embarrassed by all the (Internet) attention, but I expected it," Shaffner said. "I knew that if Jason got big, it would come out. She doesn't think so, but she's gorgeous ... and everybody loves her.

"She's still the same country girl."

Brad Paisley's loss.