While attending a house party near St. Charles, he met and fell in love with a farmer's daughter, Dellora Baker. Gates proposed to her at one of the house parties. Dellora was willing to accept Gates' proposal, but wondered how he would be able to provide for a wife, as his only income came from winning at the railroad poker games. When his father discovered Gates in a poker game with some railroad men in the family's barn, Asel told his son he was no good and would never be any good. Only Mary's mediation stopped her son from leaving home. With the realization that he needed more education than grammar school had provided, he announced to his parents that he would be enrolling in some local college classes. Gates attended some courses at nearby Wheaton College and graduated from North Central College in 1876. He had little opportunity to put his new business education to work, as the financial Panic of 1873 began just as he was completing his college work. In order to be able to marry Dellora, Gates accepted every type of job he could get for the next year; most of them were for farm work. Gates and Dellora were married on February 25, 1874.