From the Beginning – Real-life stories behind the matrimony

Every married couple has their own special story of how they met, and the details are sometimes fascinating. The evolution of attraction to care to true love isn’t governed by logic or rationality; in fact, collecting these few stories proved much harder than we expected. After all, penning a narrative about something as unique and emotional as “How we got together” has no rules: Whatever is yours is correct, special and completely you.

            With that said, here, we roam from the traditional to the very modern ways people go from boyfriend/girlfriend to husband and wife:

Mane Attraction – The Second Time Around Story

Joel and Heather dated for a short while in high school. Joel was a junior, Heather a sophomore. The pair were together long enough to attend winter formal when their young love fizzled out. Heather went on to date someone until she was 21. Joel went on to have relationships in college but nothing too serious. Joel graduated from Purdue University, and moved back into his parent’s house to work on the family farm. Not long after, he asked around about a good place to get his hair cut, to which his dad replied, “I think that Heather, that girl you dated, she does hair now.” One hair appointment led to a date, which led to an engagement, which led to a New Year’s Eve wedding.

-- Joel & Heather

Peter Pan and Me – The Facebook Story

The Halloween costume caught my attention. I was on Facebook instead of working on homework my sophomore year of college, clicking through my friend Christine’s photos from a costume party in Grantham, England, where she was studying abroad for the semester. I stumbled upon one of a girl in brown shorts, felt cloth jerkin, and tiny green hat. It was adorable. Had I been at that party, there’s no doubt in my mind that I would have talked to her. But since I was several thousand miles away in Evansville, I had to settle for the next best thing: Facebook stalking. I’d had a glimpse of Erin’s sense of humor through a ton of quotes on Christine’s page. She sounded absolutely hilarious. I engaged in typical shallow behavior, asking myself several questions. Do our tastes in music match up? What about movies? Oh, God, she’s in orchestra. Maybe she’s weird.

            Okay, so I know it sounds creepy at the outset. Just bear with me for a moment. I asked Christine about her—perhaps suggesting she should put in a good word—and hoped for the best. She did, and told me to go ahead and add her on Facebook. When Erin and I started talking through AIM (AOL Instant Messenger, if you’re not keeping up with hipster youth culture) not long afterward, the whole situation looked pretty promising – ignoring the fact that our first date wouldn’t be for another five months, of course.

            We did finally go on that first date, though not before talking on AIM every day while she was in England—and on the phone when she returned to the States. When the fall semester started in 2007, we went out to dinner a few times before saying we were an honest-to-God couple, and moved in together in May of this year.

            I guess it’s not exactly the world’s most interesting story, but it works for us. And I don’t care that it sounds a little creepy that I tell people I fell in love with Peter Pan, because that’s the truth. I wouldn’t change the girl with the green felt hat into any sexy nurse or French maid for anything in the world.

-- D & E

From “Friend Zone” to Wedded Bliss – The High School Sweetheart Story

Dan and I met the first period of the first day of my sophomore year of high school, he was a nervous freshman and who picked the seat right next to me. The class was a first period study hall, so it was a pick-your-own-seat deal. He was the first kid the teacher handed the seating chart to - so he had no point of reference as to where he “was” in the room to the empty rectangles on the sheet of paper. After a minute or two of watching him squirm I leaned over, pointed and said, “So this is the door… I’m pretty sure you’re right here…” or something along those lines. He laughed at my smart aleck remark and I knew we were going to get along just fine. It turned out we had three classes together that semester, a study hall, science and art class.

            We spent the next year as good friends, I dated a few other people throughout our friendship but we always remained friends. After a while of being single my junior year, Dan asked me out. I thought it was the next logical step in the friendship, but it turned out it was just too weird for both of us—the relationship lasted about two weeks and we went back to being friends.

            Moving on to springtime of my senior year of high school/his junior year… at this point we had been friends for three years. It was obvious we really cared about each other but in light of the previous attempt at dating things were awkward. We ended up going to prom that year with different people, and unintentionally ended up pretty much ditching our dates. It still took him two weeks to ask me out, which he did on my 18^th birthday. We had been for three years before he proposed we were engaged for three and have now been married for two as of November 10^th, 2007.

-- D & J W.