The Local newsletter is your free, daily guide to life in Colorado. For locals, by locals.
They were third graders when they met in the Colorado Avalanche’s “Wives’ Room” inside Ball Arena—though two decades later Valerie Turgeon and Garrett Klee have trouble pinpointing the exact moment. They have clearer memories of the room itself.
Valerie, daughter of Hockey Hall of Famer Pierre Turgeon and now 27 years old, remembers the mini hockey sticks provided for the kids’ entertainment as the games played on screen. Garrett, son of former NHL defenseman Ken Klee and also 27, recalls how he and his brothers would watch the game for the first two periods but retreat to a separate room for families in the third to load up on chicken fingers and popcorn. “Hopefully the dads would win,” Garrett says, “and then you’d get to go to the locker room after the game.”
Pierre Turgeon retired from professional hockey following that 2006-’07 season, but his family stayed in Denver. Valerie attended Cherry Hills Elementary, then Valor Christian and Mullen high schools before heading to a more hockey-centric prep school in Minnesota. From there, she went to Harvard College, playing for two years on its women’s ice hockey team before hanging up her skates.
Ken Klee also left the Avs after 2007, signing as a free agent with the Atlanta Thrashers (now the Winnipeg Jets). Garrett played junior hockey in Iowa and Wisconsin before joining Northern Michigan University’s program.
Although Valerie and Garrett spent only one season in the Avalanche’s orbit, the Klees and Turgeons were brought together later by life’s highs and devastating lows. In 2010, Valerie’s 18-year-old sister Elizabeth was tragically killed in a car crash. The Klees attended the visitation, though their sons stayed in the car. “They were so young,” Valerie says. But their presence stuck with her.
The Klees were also present when Valerie’s other older sister, Alex, got married in 2019. Still, because Garrett seemed to have no social media accounts (“so odd,” Valerie says) she knew almost nothing about his adult life.
Then, in September 2022, the Avs held a reunion in Vail, where Valerie and her parents ran into Garrett and his parents at a cocktail event for players’ families. “I was like, ‘Wow. He looks good,’” laughs Valerie, who’s just weeks older than Garrett. “Specifically, I was like, ‘He has a nice butt.’”
They fell into pace walking next to each other and, from that moment on, became nearly inseparable, spending time alone walking Valerie’s goldendoodle, Max. The budding romance wasn’t lost on their families; Valerie’s mom took a surreptitious photo of the pair from behind as they watched a charity game. “I was like, ‘Why did you take that?’” Valerie says. “And she was like, ‘Well, you never know. It might mean something.’”
Things moved quickly after the reunion. When Garrett returned to his parents’ place in Castle Rock, Valerie decided to visit her sister in Littleton. “I just wanted to keep hanging out, so I decided to come down early,” Valerie says. The pair hung out every day.
About a month later, Garrett packed his things and headed for Kansas City, where he had signed to play for the local minor-league hockey team. Valerie followed two weeks later. “The fact that I wanted to drop everything and move to Kansas City—where I know no one, I’ve never been there before, but I was so confident in wanting to go and had zero hesitation because I wanted to just be with him—that told me, OK this is a very serious, serious thing,” she says.
Her new boyfriend felt the same. “For someone to have that trust in me was something different, especially coming from that hockey world,” Garrett says. “It’s so up and down, and you never really know. But for her to kind of be a constant there was huge for me.”
She’d be more of a constant than he realized at the time. After just a month in Kansas, the minor-league team released Garrett. The new couple returned to Vail and spent several months regrouping at Valerie’s family home. “I got to ski for like 40 days, which was awesome,” Garrett laughs. “Playing hockey, [I] never got to do that.”
They bought a house in Castle Rock about six months after becoming an item. In June 2024, he proposed on a vacation to Costa Rica, flying Valerie’s parents down for the surprise. (His were already there.)
Although Valerie briefly considered tying the knot at her family’s lake house in their native Quebec, they eventually settled on a venue in Colorado, Spruce Mountain Ranch in Larkspur, where they’ll be married this July. “It felt right,” Valerie says. “We have most of our family here. Our roots are here. So it just kind of made sense for both of us.”
Naturally, hockey will likely feature prominently in the ceremony: They’re thinking of having two jerseys, one Turgeon and one Klee, for guests to sign. The jerseys would be more than a guest registry. They’d also serve as a reminder of what brought them together. “To have someone that kind of understands that lifestyle—her dad played, my dad played, she was a Division I hockey player, I was—to understand that mentality of putting in the work that we did and still be good people at the end, and realize that life is a lot more than just hockey, it’s kind of rare to have that,” Garrett says.
