Montana
Help! My Friend Is Moving to Montana to Search for a Cowboy Millionaire.
Dear Prudence is Slate’s advice column. Ashley C. Ford is filling in as Prudie for Jenée Desmond-Harris while she’s on parental leave. Submit questions here.
Dear Prudence,
My friend has suffered a personality transplant. We’re in our mid-30s and I think she’s having an early mid-life crisis. She has become obsessed with tradwife content and complains about her job and social life, saying she wishes it was the 1950s when women could stay at home and be wives and mothers. Wishing to achieve that lifestyle, she has decided to get married but has had no luck finding the man of her dreams, which is a cross between a cowboy and a millionaire. In a desperate attempt to meet someone with traditional values, and thinking that the problem is the fact that we live in a large West Coast city, she believes that what she needs to do is relocate to a different state like Montana.
I’m afraid that if she uses her savings to go on a hunt for this unattainable cowboy millionaire, she is going to not only torpedo her career but might eventually end up in debt. I’ve told her tradwives are content creators and it’s all for show, but she won’t listen. I want to stage an intervention with her sister. She’s very close to her sister and I think she may be the one who might be able to get through to her. Do you think this is wise? I don’t want her to hate me, but I’m worried.
—Living in Fantasy Land
Dear Fantasy Land,
We’ve heard so much over the last few years about men being red-pilled (even more so during these last few weeks), but I don’t think we’ve paid enough attention to the women being led to their own version of regressive ideals propped up by anxiety about the quality of their livelihoods. It sounds like your friend found herself sucked into that particular world of mythmaking. I’m sure it’s been disconcerting for you to watch it happen up close and in real-time. However, this is the kind of thing people fall into and resist all attempts to be pulled out of. I’m not saying your friend couldn’t use an intervention, but I think you should prepare yourself for the very real possibility that, even with her sister’s assistance, she may already be too far gone into her Billionaire Cowboy dream. Will you be able to handle that?
Before you go the intervention route, have a candid conversation with your friend about why she feels so attached to this dream, and where she hopes it all leads. In my experience, people who lean into these ideas are not just looking for a husband or a lifestyle, they’re looking for a specific feeling to either experience for the first time or recapture for themselves. Maybe she’s looking to feel cared for, protected, and undeniably loved. Maybe she feels like fantasy is her best option. Talking to your friend about her choices will help you figure out what she ultimately wants, which might help you suggest other ways she might find what she’s looking for out of life.
Please keep questions short (
Dear Prudence,
Me and my boyfriend were dating for a while. Then he started speaking to me dryly, so I checked on him and it turned out he was cheating on me. We broke up and did not have any contact with each other for a while. Until he hit me up asking how I was and telling him he missed me. I still had feelings for him so we got back together, but then after a few months, he cheated on me again. What does this mean and what should I do in this situation?
—Fake Relationship
Dear Fake Relationship,
It means that no matter how much you love him, or how many times you forgive him, he will cheat on you. You should stop giving him the opportunity to do so.
Want Advice on Parenting, Kids, or Family Life?
Submit your questions to Care and Feeding here. It’s anonymous! (Questions may be edited for publication.)
Dear Prudence,
I’m a man in my 30s who is struggling with a really bad crush on a female co-worker. Although I’ve had plenty of co-worker crushes in the past, this is different. I’m not sleeping well, I’m anxious, and I’m having a difficult time keeping these feelings out of my mind. I spend the “free” moments of my work day either hiding out so that I don’t run into them or inventing excuses to go and talk to them (then chickening out). I haven’t felt like this since I met my spouse, who I’m currently married to.
I have no intention of cheating on my partner, and I really don’t get the sense that this other person shares my feelings. Even if they did, I would know better than to do anything about it. I’m not going to throw my life away for a colleague I have no future with. I hope to ride this out for a while and wait for it to dissipate, as I assume it will. But I wonder if the intensity of my feelings has to do with the pressure I feel to keep them secret. My spouse is insecure about her appearance and a little jealous—not intensely, but she gets a little paranoid about, say, the women I’m friends with at work (the crush is one of them). When I’ve had crushes in the past, it’s been easy to keep them to myself because the attraction doesn’t really occur to me until I’m sharing space with this person during the work day. By the time I’ve clocked out, I’ve already forgotten about them. But because this current crush is so psychologically present for me, I’m desperate to talk about it, especially with the person I’m closest to. I feel like I can’t because I’m worried about hurting her feelings.
I know that this crush will pass, that it’s not my fault that I caught feelings for someone, nor is it a betrayal to simply “have feelings.” But I also doubt it will be the last time it happens to me, and I want to find a way to discuss this with her that will be honest, non-threatening, and hopefully non-combative. I’m not looking to open the relationship up. If we could have a conversation in which I admit to these unexpected feelings, and if we could both laugh at what a ridiculous state I am in, I could hold these feelings a little more lightly and let go of them more easily. I worry if I keep bottling them up, I’m going to feel even more crazy and possibly resentful of the fact that I can’t talk about something that’s causing me significant discomfort. How do I approach this conversation? Should I have it all? Is there anything I should avoid saying? Anything I should definitely say? Help!
—I’ve Got It Bad, And It’s Really Bad
Dear Really Bad,
You don’t need to tell your wife about your crush, you need to make some new friends. There’s nothing odd about having a crush, some of us are more prone to them than others. As long as no lines are crossed, it’s harmless. Where the harm comes in is when you act on inappropriate feelings, commit infidelity, or make someone uncomfortable by sharing the crush, especially in the workplace. While your wife doesn’t work with you, it’s clear to me that you would be causing her undue distress by attempting to discuss this crush with her. (She’s already expressed jealousy about the specific person you can’t get out of your mind!) Despite your explanation, I’m having a hard time understanding why you would even consider this. Because she’s close to you and you have no one else to talk with about it? That reasoning just doesn’t pass the bar. If you really believe the only relief you’ll feel will come from sharing your feelings about this all-consuming crush, then you should talk to someone who’s more your friend than your wife’s and leave her out of it.
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Dear Prudence,
I have been married for 10 years. When I married my husband, I knew he was not an extrovert, nor a person who could work a room. He had no close friends. I always thought he was misunderstood or worked too hard to have time for excess because he loved me dearly and well when we were dating. He is now a loyal hardworking professional man with a good job in the financial sector, and whose baseline actions indicate that he loves his family. He doesn’t cheat, and he comes home and spends time with the kids. But over time, the reason for his isolation has become evident.
His communication style under stress is curt, unfeeling, and dictatorial to all those around him—usually me, our parents, and our children. He stonewalls me when things overwhelm him. This has put our marriage under strain. When an argument arises, usually it’s due to his overly negative reaction to a basic life occurrence that wouldn’t sway another person. For example, if a friend of mine comes by our home with less than 24 hours’ notice, he gets upset and storms around the house. Once he dropped some papers, and blamed me for the item on the floor he tripped over. (It was a Hot Wheel.) If he can’t find something, it’s because I misplaced it. If I’m washing dishes in a space he thinks he needs to be in, I’m the one in the way even if I was there first. I try to discuss these moods with him and understand why he feels so strongly about these minor things but he shuts me down.
When he asks me to do something, it’s usually in the form of an order. When I ask why he speaks that way when he could just as easily ask nicely, he says he shouldn’t have to sugarcoat his words at home. I’m pragmatic and usually shrug things off pretty easily, but these little moments have added up over time to build significant resentment. I can’t live this way my whole life. I feel like a second-class citizen in my own home. I stay for the kids and moral reasons. I am financially stable so that is not stopping me. I also don’t want my children to treat their spouses this way in the future, but my son is watching his every move and has started speaking like him. The answer is probably counseling, but good resources aren’t readily available in our area and I doubt he will agree to go. Am I seeing things as worse than they are?
—Second-Class Citizen
Dear Second-Class Citizen,
You’re not making things out to be worse than they are, you are living under emotional dominance. Your husband is likely a person who processes all his difficult emotions as anger because he doesn’t consider anger an emotion. However, you and his loved ones are obviously well aware that it is. When someone refuses to seek counseling for an emotional problem, they’ll often defend their behavior to a serious degree.
Though you’ve lived with this behavior for a long time, it seems you’ve realized that “dealing” with someone else’s smoldering anger becomes unbearable. It’s time for your husband to understand just how unbearable it’s become. When he’s not in a “mood,” approach him and let him know that this issue can’t stand. Put him in charge of figuring out how to address it, since your suggestions have been met with a wall. Let him know that this isn’t just something you don’t want to live with, it’s something you won’t live with anymore.
—Ashley
Classic Prudie
My husband used to work for a major theme park. As a perk, we could get guests into the park for free. It was a bit of a family tradition that I would take the kids of the family for an outing or two while their parents got a little time for themselves. The rules were simple: They had to be potty trained and only family. I wasn’t taking time off to take everyone on earth for a free vacation. At the end of my husband working there, my brother had been dating “Sara” for a few months. Sara was a single mom of two and I had never met her or her kids at that point. My brother wanted to bring Sara and the kids down for a visit with all the bells and whistles. I declined.
Montana
Montana Lottery Big Sky Bonus results for April 19, 2026
The Montana Lottery offers multiple draw games for those aiming to win big.
Here’s a look at April 19, 2026, results for each game:
Winning Big Sky Bonus numbers from April 19 drawing
05-13-15-17, Bonus: 01
Check Big Sky Bonus payouts and previous drawings here.
Feeling lucky? Explore the latest lottery news & results
When are the Montana Lottery drawings held?
- Powerball: 8:59 p.m. MT on Monday, Wednesday, and Saturday.
- Mega Millions: 9 p.m. MT on Tuesday and Friday.
- Lucky For Life: 8:38 p.m. MT daily.
- Lotto America: 9 p.m. MT on Monday, Wednesday and Saturday.
- Big Sky Bonus: 7:30 p.m. MT daily.
- Powerball Double Play: 8:59 p.m. MT on Monday, Wednesday, and Saturday.
- Montana Cash: 8 p.m. MT on Wednesday and Saturday.
- Millionaire for Life: 9:15 p.m. MT daily.
Missed a draw? Peek at the past week’s winning numbers.
This results page was generated automatically using information from TinBu and a template written and reviewed by a Great Falls Tribune editor. You can send feedback using this form.
Montana
Rural Highway Stalker In White Pickup With Dark Windows Terrifying Montana Women
The Ole’ Mercantile is a busy place by Grass Range, Montana, standards.
The community of roughly 125 people sits along a long, lonely network of two-lane highways connecting Billings with points north along Montana’s Hi-Line.
For drivers pushing toward Lewistown, Malta or Glasgow, the store’s lights are often the first sign of anything for miles.
Of late, they may also offer a chance of identifying the person driving a truck local women say is stalking these roads.
Owner Krista Manley told Cowboy State Daily her store is outfitted with a top-of-the-line camera system that offers a 360-degree view with no blind spots. Four overlapping cameras capture her property, the Wrangler Bar and the full stretch of Highway 87 frontage running through town.
Fergus County investigators now hope that footage — and Manley’s willingness to comb through hours of it — can help identify the driver of a newer white Ford four-door pickup with dark tinted windows, no front license plate and a chrome grill guard.
The truck is at the center of the most recent reported highway stalking incident.
Lizette Lamb, a 48-year-old traveling health care worker, says she was nearly run off the road the evening of April 10.
Now a growing chorus of similar accounts from women across north-central Montana are popping up on social media.
At The Ole Merc
Travis Lamb, Lizette’s husband, took to Facebook to post about what happened to his wife on one of the loneliest stretches of highway in Montana.
Travis told Cowboy State Daily Lizette pulled into the Ole’ Merc Conoco in Grass Range between 7 and 8 p.m. to grab a drink. She later remembered a pickup was backed in alongside the cafe: a newer white Ford four-door.
“Kind of gave her the heebie-jeebies,” he said. “My wife has worked in a prison and stuff like that, so she’s used to kind of going with her gut.”
She bought a drink, got back in her Ford Bronco Sport and headed north on Highway 19 toward Glasgow.
About a mile and a half down the road, she realized the white pickup was behind her. Through the dark tint, she could make out the silhouettes of two men.
She slowed down and edged toward the shoulder to let them pass. They slowed with her. She sped up. They sped up.
By the time she reached Bohemian Corner 23 miles up the road, Travis Lamb said, his wife knew something was wrong.
There were no other vehicles in the lot, so she didn’t bother pulling in. She tried to call Travis. No service.
She tried 911. The phone beeped, displayed a red message and disconnected.
Truck Gets Aggressive
The white truck continued to shadow Lizette along Highway 191. About two miles from where the road crosses the Missouri River, coming into a construction zone, the pickup got aggressive.
Travis said the truck rode so close to the Bronco’s bumper that his wife could no longer see its windshield, only the grille.
Then it pulled out as if to pass and swerved into her, he said, in what he described as an attempted PIT maneuver — the law-enforcement technique of clipping a fleeing vehicle’s rear quarter to spin it out.
PIT stands for Precision Immobilization Technique, and this tactic is used to stop a fleeing vehicle by forcing it to turn sideways, causing the driver to lose control and stop.
“She was fortunate, kind of timed it to when they went to turn into her and hit her, she sped up,” Travis Lamb said. “And they missed.”
That’s when Lizette Lamb pulled her Springfield XDM 9mm pistol out of the center console. She didn’t point it, but she made sure they could see it.
The white pickup hit its brakes, threw a U-turn in a spray of dust and gravel, and headed back toward Grass Range.
The Video
“I thank God that it did happen to her and not somebody else, because I know my wife is more than capable of defending herself,” said Travis Lamb, an Iraq War combat veteran, who eventually reached out to Manley at the Ole Merc.
Then, when Manley reviewed the surveillance video from the Merc’s camera system, she found no sign of a white Ford truck.
“We have not found evidence of them at our store or at the three businesses that come along the highway right there,” Manley said. “That doesn’t mean it didn’t happen.
“My default is to absolutely believe women, and she (Lizette) was, she was rattled.”
Manley holds a Ph.D. in cognitive psychology and ran the research team at Procore Technologies before going into business for herself.
When reviewing the video, Manley logged the times Lizette arrived and left, and then watched the highway for an hour after.
“We’re absolutely not arguing the authenticity of the report in any way, shape or form,” said Manley. “In my previous life before I had the store, I actually was a memory and cognition researcher. I understand how stress impacts memory.”
The Echoes
Travis Lamb’s Facebook post went off like a flare.
He tallied 36 accounts of similar experiences in roughly the same swath of country stretching across prairie and badlands in one of the least populated parts of Montana.
The pattern in many of the comments was consistent enough to be unsettling: a white pickup, often a Ford, sometimes with out-of-state plates, tailgating women on isolated stretches of two-lane after dark.
One commenter described being followed by a white truck north of Grass Range three years ago around 10 p.m., tailgated with brights on at more than 80 mph until the truck peeled off in a different direction.
Another described a white Ford pickup near Harlowton trying to force her to stop, then waiting for her at a gas station. Another recalled a white pickup with North Dakota plates in the same area.
In Wyoming, one poster described two men in a white truck with Washington plates on Highway 120 between Cody and Meeteetse who tailgated her, tried to push her off the road, then cut in front and slammed on the brakes.
Other women described different vehicles — a dark Escalade, a small white car, a black double-cab — but the same script: tailgating, refusing to pass, brake-checking, dead zones with no cell service.
Easter Night
One name in that Facebook thread was Joni Hartford of Lewistown, who told Cowboy State Daily she had her own near-identical encounter on Easter evening just days before Lizette Lamb’s.
Hartford, who works in insurance, had dropped off some belongings to her son, a football player at Rocky Mountain College in Billings.
She stopped at a gas station on her way out of town “for a pop,” climbed back into her red 2014 Ford F-150 and headed north on Highway 87 around 7:30 or 8 p.m.
“I noticed it right after I left Billings,” Hartford said of the pickup behind her. “It was right behind me and I kept thinking, ‘God, this vehicle is super close.’”
About 15 miles out of town, past the racetracks, she pulled toward the white line and slowed to 60 mph on a long straightaway, hoping the truck would go around. It wouldn’t.
“He was so close behind me, I couldn’t see his taillights, but I could see his marker lamps on his mirrors, his tow mirrors,” Hartford said. “So I knew it was a Ford pickup, and I knew it was like a three-quarter or a 1-ton. It was a big pickup.”
She couldn’t make out the color in the dark. She called her husband.
“I said, ‘This pickup is tailgating me,’ and said, ‘It’s really kind of making me nervous, because if I had to stop for a deer, it would run me over. It would run me off the road,’” Hartford said.
“And he goes, ‘Well, just stop.’ And I said, ‘I am not stopping. I’m in the middle of freaking nowhere,’” she added.
She made it through Roundup with the truck still on her bumper.
North of town, climbing toward Grass Range, Hartford caught a lucky break with an Amish buggy sluggishly clapping up a blind hill and slowing traffic.
“I darted around the Amish buggy, right before the blind hill, and he couldn’t get around them, and I just gunned it, and I was going probably 90 mph just to put space between us,” Hartford said. “I never seen him again.”
Hartford carries a .380 pistol. She had it out and on the seat. She didn’t show it — between the dark and her tinted windows, she wasn’t sure the driver behind her would have seen it anyway.
When Lamb’s post crossed her Facebook feed, Hartford said the parallels stopped her cold.
“It’s the same exact situation,” she said. “I can’t say for certain it was the same person, but it sure seems like it was the same person.”
Hartford said she believes the driver is hunting for circumstance: single women, after dark, on a corridor he knows is desolate and short on cell coverage.
“They’re targeting them at gas stations,” she said. “That’s the only place they could have found me, because it’s the only place I’ve stopped.”
The Candidate
Penny Ronning, cofounder and president of the Yellowstone Human Trafficking Task Force, had a similar drive in 2022.
She remembers it as the only time in nearly a year of solo campaign travel across 41 Montana counties that she felt afraid.
Ronning, then a Democratic candidate for U.S. Congress, was driving from Billings to Havre for a campaign event.
Instead of taking the interstate, she chose the back roads — north out of Winifred on Highway 236, a route that runs about 30 miles of gravel through some of the most remote country in the state before dropping into the Missouri River Breaks, which Ronning compared to a Montana version of the Grand Canyon.
As she entered the gravel, a four-door white pickup with blacked-out windows pulled in behind her.
“That was what made it frightening,” Ronning said. “It was that I was followed.”
Ronning, who has spent years working on human trafficking policy and prevention, was careful to push back on the framing that has circulated on Facebook around the Lamb case — that the white-pickup encounters are likely abduction attempts tied to trafficking networks.
“Human trafficking is the use of force, fraud or coercion to compel a person into commercial sex acts or labor against their will,” Ronning said. “Just because someone is being followed, that doesn’t rise to the level of human trafficking.”
The most prevalent form of human trafficking in the United States, she said, is familial trafficking, one family member trafficking another.
In Montana, she said, labor trafficking is also common in construction, nail salons, illicit massage businesses, hospitality and domestic servitude in pockets of high-end real estate.
Sex trafficking almost always begins with someone the victim knows.
The Watch
Back in Grass Range, every white pickup that rolls past the four-corner blinking light is now turning heads.
Manley said her store has worked closely with the Fergus County Sheriff’s Office on past incidents, and her cameras are essentially a standing resource for investigators.
She also said the response on social media has dismayed her, commenters questioning whether these highway stalking incidents happened at all, or suggesting Grass Range itself isn’t safe.
She believes her store, and others like it in remote pockets of Montana, are informal refuges.
“We’ve all been there, whether it’s in a snowstorm or where we’re just uncomfortable driving like this where we’re just like, ‘Oh my gosh,’ you see the big lights and you’re like, there’s a beacon of safety, essentially,” Manley said.
She said that her eyes are open to potential threats along the isolated highways connecting Grass Range to the rest of the world.
“We know that it is a highway that has a reputation for, you know, trafficking, drug moving, all of those different things, and that’s why we are as diligent as we are,” said Manley. “We really care about the safety of our community, our employees, and our customers.”
Manley remains in contact with the Lambs.
“She told me, ‘I’m not going to quit looking,’” said Travis, explaining how Manley is arranging for the Lambs to review the footage themselves.
Travis figures that perhaps, “Instead of a white Ford, maybe it’s a tan Dodge.”
He added, “I’m hoping somebody’s like, ‘I know that pickup.’ That’s what I’m praying for.”
So is Lizette, who told Cowboy State Daily, she’s thankful for the response to her story. She’s also thankful she was traveling with her sidearm.
“Unfortunately, that’s the world we live in now. You know, Montana, in the middle of nowhere,” said Lizette, who encouraged anyone else with similar encounters to come forward.
“This is just a reminder that it is happening,” she said. “It is real.”
David Madison can be reached at david@cowboystatedaily.com.
Montana
Montana Lottery Powerball, Lotto America results for April 18, 2026
The Montana Lottery offers multiple draw games for those aiming to win big.
Here’s a look at April 18, 2026, results for each game:
Winning Powerball numbers from April 18 drawing
24-25-39-46-61, Powerball: 01, Power Play: 5
Check Powerball payouts and previous drawings here.
Winning Lotto America numbers from April 18 drawing
18-21-22-32-42, Star Ball: 10, ASB: 03
Check Lotto America payouts and previous drawings here.
Winning Big Sky Bonus numbers from April 18 drawing
10-16-29-31, Bonus: 13
Check Big Sky Bonus payouts and previous drawings here.
Winning Montana Cash numbers from April 18 drawing
06-08-09-20-22
Check Montana Cash payouts and previous drawings here.
Feeling lucky? Explore the latest lottery news & results
When are the Montana Lottery drawings held?
- Powerball: 8:59 p.m. MT on Monday, Wednesday, and Saturday.
- Mega Millions: 9 p.m. MT on Tuesday and Friday.
- Lucky For Life: 8:38 p.m. MT daily.
- Lotto America: 9 p.m. MT on Monday, Wednesday and Saturday.
- Big Sky Bonus: 7:30 p.m. MT daily.
- Powerball Double Play: 8:59 p.m. MT on Monday, Wednesday, and Saturday.
- Montana Cash: 8 p.m. MT on Wednesday and Saturday.
- Millionaire for Life: 9:15 p.m. MT daily.
Missed a draw? Peek at the past week’s winning numbers.
This results page was generated automatically using information from TinBu and a template written and reviewed by a Great Falls Tribune editor. You can send feedback using this form.
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