“I knew my wife had something going on because he was making excuses to take me to breakfast, but I couldn’t have imagined anything this cool,” he said.

Patey’s wife surprised him by flying his Cessna 172 airplane to the Provo Airport at 11 a.m. Saturday. Patey had no idea his wife, Chandra, had been taking flying lessons.

Chandra Patey is the third member of the family to take up lessons within the past year. The family caught the flying bug a year ago when Chandra’s parents, Randy and Coni Brooks of Highland, flew Mike and Chandra Patey and their four children to California for a vacation.

Before the flight, Mike Patey had no interest in flying — and even became air sick. But something changed his mind that day, and within a week he had purchased a plane and began taking lessons. Now Mike Patey, who is the owner of Rec World in Orem, owns four planes.

Earlier this summer, Coni Brooks began taking flying lessons. Chandra Patey joined her after realizing that lessons might one day save her family’s life.

“We were flying to Lake Powell one day with our children in the back and Mike mentioned to me that he was hungry so I handed him a piece of beef jerky,” said Chandra Patey. “He took a bite of it and said to me, ‘What would you do if I choked on thisfi’ I turned around and looked at my kids and I thought, ‘There would not be a whole lot I could do about it’ — and at that point I decided I had better learn how to do this.”

With her husband’s birthday coming up, Chandra Patey decided to keep the lessons a secret with the help of her parents and her flight instructors at Advantage Aviation.

“I decided I might as well keep it a secret for his birthday since he is so hard to shop for anyway,” she said. She has been flying three days a week, two hours a day, since July. She has paid $3,000 so far for the lessons and expects to have her license completed within a month.

Because Mike Patey is a pilot as well, there were several close calls at the runway when he would come to fly and she was in the air, she said. Sometimes her instructor would communicate with airport controllers so her husband would not hear her voice over the radio.

The family gathered at the airport Saturday under the pretense of watching Coni Brooks complete a flight. As he watched the plane land and taxi toward the hanger, Mike Patey had no idea that his wife was at the controls.

“No way!” he shouted when he realized what was happening. “I don’t know what to say, I had no clue. This is coming from a girl that said ‘I hate small planes.’ She wouldn’t even get in that plane with me. That is insane.”

Hiding the fact that she was taking lessons has been difficult, Chandra Patey said.

“He works quite a lot and I just had all kinds of excuses,” she said.

“I would call all the time and she would say ‘We are doing this or that, we’re over here or there,’ ” said Mike Patey. “I had no idea. I am in shock — I can’t believe this.”

Caleb Warnock can be reached at 344-2543 or cwarnock@heraldextra.com.

This story appeared in The Daily Herald on page C1.