{"id":551348,"date":"2026-04-12T20:37:27","date_gmt":"2026-04-12T20:37:27","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/551348\/"},"modified":"2026-04-12T20:37:27","modified_gmt":"2026-04-12T20:37:27","slug":"cbj-hockey-has-been-a-family-story-for-one-season-ticket-holder","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/551348\/","title":{"rendered":"CBJ hockey has been a family story for one season ticket holder"},"content":{"rendered":"

When the Blue Jackets arrived in Columbus back in October 2000, Cheryl\u00a0McGarvey learned something new about her husband, Dan.\u00a0<\/p>\n

The couple had attended a few Columbus Chill games over the years in the 1990s before the Blue Jackets arrival, but hockey had never been a huge part of their lives together. But, as it turned out, Dan had grown up in Western Ohio and attended games when the Dayton had a franchise in the International Hockey League, so the arrival of an NHL team to Central Ohio immediately piqued his interest.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u201cWe were dating in high school, and it was always basketball, football, that\u00a0was about it,\u201d McGarvey said. \u201cHe never really said anything about being interested in hockey. Come to find out when he brought up going down there to become season ticket holders, I looked at him and said, \u2018What? Why?\u2019 And he had gone to Dayton with some friends when he was younger to a lot of hockey games, and I didn\u2019t know that.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n

So the\u00a0McGarveys visited Nationwide Arena when seats first went on sale, and\u00a0that day, the couple became full season ticket holders with a pair of seats in section 214.\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u201cHe is the one that brought it up and said, \u2018Let\u2019s go down and see what this is like,\u2019\u201d McGarvey remembers. \u201cI was like, \u2018I didn\u2019t know you were that big of a hockey fan.\u2019\u00a0So\u00a0we went down there and looked at the seats, and he wanted to do it, so\u00a0that\u2019s\u00a0what we did.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n

As the Blue Jackets celebrate the fans with tonight\u2019s 5th Line Celebration<\/a>, Cheryl has been a season ticket holder in section 214 for the entire quarter-century of CBJ hockey. Unfortunately, she only got to spend a handful of those years with Dan.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Just three months after the team’s inaugural game in Nationwide Arena, Dan was diagnosed with pancreatic cancer. He fought it until Jan. 13, 2004, when he passed away.\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n

During his battle, though, Dan was still a devoted Blue Jackets fan. Even as he went through bouts of chemotherapy and treatments, he still made a point to attend as many games as he could, keeping a sense of normalcy to his routine and enjoying the chance to root on the Blue Jackets.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u201cHe always wanted to go to the games,\u201d McGarvey said. \u201cEven after working all day, we still went to games. The only time he\u00a0didn\u2019t\u00a0go was if he\u00a0was\u00a0at\u00a0The James, and\u00a0he\u2019d\u00a0watch it on TV, or if I\u00a0was\u00a0up\u00a0there\u00a0I’d\u00a0watch it on TV with him.\u00a0It\u2019s\u00a0a motivation to keep going and everything.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n

In the years after Dan passed, Cheryl created a new tradition, going with her family and friends to games each year on Jan. 13 if the Blue Jackets happened to be home. The annual Hockey Fights Cancer game also holds a place of importance to the McGarvey family.\u00a0<\/p>\n

McGarvey has made a number of friends over the years in her section, and her grandson, Kyle, also became hooked on the sport after going to games as a kid with Dan and Cheryl. After attending a few\u00a0CBJ games, he enrolled in the Blue Jackets\u2019 Learn To Play program, joined a few youth teams and ended up playing for the\u00a0Westerville\u00a0Warcats\u00a0high school team before moving on to adult hockey.\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u201cAfter the first couple of games, that\u2019s what he wanted to do,\u201d McGarvey said. \u201cNo other sport, just hockey.\u00a0He\u2019s\u00a0the only one of the grandkids that played hockey, but\u00a0it was the only thing he wanted to do. He\u00a0didn\u2019t\u00a0want to do anything else.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n

Through the 25 years of friendships, family outings and hockey fandom, McGarvey has stuck with the Blue Jackets, evening getting a custom CBJ license plate that reads JKT5TH. She was chosen a few years ago for the team\u2019s end-of-season jersey giveaway, receiving a sweater on the ice from Pierre-Luc\u00a0Dubois, and one prized possession is a breast cancer awareness stick with pink tape signed by former CBJ player Kevyn Adams.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"When the Blue Jackets arrived in Columbus back in October 2000, Cheryl\u00a0McGarvey learned something new about her husband,…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":551349,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":"","_share_on_mastodon":"0"},"categories":[377],"tags":[5],"class_list":{"0":"post-551348","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-hockey","8":"tag-hockey"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/551348","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=551348"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/551348\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/551349"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=551348"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=551348"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=551348"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}