For those many years, one valuable lesson I learnt is, being a sheep and following other people, in a lot of cases, aren't optimal, but ROI is not bad. Being cynical might make oneself seem smart and level headed, but you can also miss valuable opportunity. Don't assume the crowd know the best, but when there are a lot of people, that often indicates it is where the money is at.
I'm happy that OKC has jobs. That's wonderful. No sarcasm. I'm glad to hear it. But it's not rural. :) OKC is a big city compared to everywhere I used to live.
Where I am from most recently, there were 5 employers (in the tech field).
Two universities. They were doing a lot of outsourcing.
One engineering firm, which I worked for, which itself about 90% of all the local jobs.
Then 2-3 smaller firms about 1/10 the size of the firm I worked for. I hear that there's another firm in town these days.
Local pay was, after you did cost of living adjustments, about 30% under what you'd get elsewhere. New jobs that weren't in the big firm showed up about one-two a month, and a lot of that was skeevy MBA types wanting a startup.
This was a big city compared to where I grew up, which had 1-2 web site consultancies, a very-much-not-software engineering firm, and a consultancy I never really looked at.
I was recently in Oklahoma City for a JS conference (ThunderPlains), and there was no shortage of jobs. There was a shortage of devs though - the folks there felt very comfortable moving or losing jobs because there might only be a dozen jobs opening a day, but there were almost zero people applying.