Ways Happy Couples Have Met

Stepping over a chessboard at a party, he suggested a move over his shoulder and kept walking.  "What an arrogant prick," she thought.  Now, they're happily married.

His dad was an employee at her company, and he asked her out at a company party.  "Not my type," she thought.  "Definitely not my type."  But she decided there was no harm in going on one date, and it's been three years.

Match.com.  Who meets this way?  Lots of people.  A year long relationship, a four month breakup, and then a reconciliation and a wedding.  I was much slower to forgive him for the breakup period than she was, and gave him wary dirty looks for the first few months they were back together. 

8 Minute Dating.  When she proposed to him on a beach on New Year's morning, he told her he had to think about it.  He went home and called his dad, asking for his grandmother's wedding ring.  A few days later, he proposed to her, telling her how his grandparents had met at a "mixer," just like they had. 

There was a room for rent.  She came to look at it, and they started talking.  She didn't take the room, then, but now they are living together.

They were set up.  He asked his friends if they knew anyone, and they gave him her number, and let her know he would be calling.  They went out to dinner, and were surprised that it wasn't awkward at all. 

She was with friends, having coffee before going to meet her dad, a Democratic Congressman.  A handsome man who knew one of her friends came by to say hello, and they both noticed one another.  She asked her friend afterwards: "Was he really wearing a "W" hat?  Did it stand for what I think it does?"  The friend confirmed it, but suggested they might have a lot in common anyway, and invited them both to her next party, where they sought one another out.

He was at a party.  She had a boyfriend, but she sparkled when she talked to him.  He asked the hostess about her, and learned that the boyfriend was on the way out.  The next time he saw her, there was no boyfriend, and he drove her home after dinner.

There are more, but I'd like to hear yours.  I'm still a little sheepish that our story is, "She had a blog, and he read it."  But I'm not sure there's any 'right' way to meet someone.

Comments

[Meg]

There is no "right" way to meet anyone, that much is certainly true. My ex-boyfriend is on his way out with a woman who really enjoys their own story (met by chance at an airport, and were from the same hometown). She likes telling it, and it's a neat story, but not enough alone to keep him around.

It's just one factor of so many other things, although I do love the cute how-we-met stories from long-lasting couples too. :) Probably because it gives everyone hope that love can be found, literally, anywhere at anytime.

[milka]

She was reading by the pool at her apartment complex when he took the lounge next to hers and asked about the book she was reading. Later, she asked which area in the complex he had his apartment. He confessed he didn't live there, he was just trespassing for the pool. Later, she moved out of the apartment into his house & they got married.

[Krista]

They met in a graduate seminar on Queer Theory. He was the only straight person in the room. It’s been four years.

[girltuesday]

many septembers ago, in a city far, far away, he asked her coworker whether she was single. (he was falsely informed "not signle.") but the following april, they had a business lunch together. they exchanged emails. they corresponded for three months. (he rescued her apartment keys from the pit of an elevator but that's a different story.) finally, he asked her out. it's been three years.

[Bill]

"She had a blog, and he read it."

I think that's great. Think how far we've come in terms of technology and meeting people. A generation ago there's no way you would have met each other, much less become a couple. I met my girl on Match.com, I highly doubt we would have met otherwise, although she lived 2 blocks from where I worked at the time, her cousin's cousin is married to a good friend of my brother's, and her college friend is best friends with a woman I went to grad school with. A small world in many ways, made even smaller by the internet.

[Bill]

Almost forgot, another good friend of her's from college now works at the same school as our friend SP in San Fran. Crazy.

[capella]

I have a blog, and he read it.

So far we're very happy, but we're newer than you and Mr. NBT and we have more (physical) distance between us.

[PG]

There are more, but I'd like to hear yours. I'm still a little sheepish that our story is, "She had a blog, and he read it." But I'm not sure there's any 'right' way to meet someone.

:-) I'm sheepish about the "we knew each other from the internet" story too. Much easier just to say, "met at school." But "She had a blog, and he read it," and vice versa, has an aspect that I don't think any of the other stories do -- the sense that you know this person some before you ever make contact, much less meet. And what that does to your pre-set tolerances (you already know what the "W" would stand for) and how you react to aspects of the person that weren't on the blog.

[pjm]

I'd be suspicious of a guy in a Williams hat, too.

[jdz]

They met on the internet as well. They were both members of a triathlon chat board but had never met. She drove two and a half hours under the guise of doing a race, but really it was because she wanted to meet him. He looked interesting. Four and a half years later, they are still together.

They tell their friends they met a triathlon. Which is sort of true.

[Sybil]

What a great entry...
I, too, don't have the best "how we met" story, but I love him and I really think he "gets me."

Your entry reminds me of Charlotte's wedding to Harry on Sex & The City - the wedding was a disaster, but the marriage was solid.

[DivaGirl]

I met my DH while still in training for pharmacy and doing a rotation on a hospital floor. He would stop by the pharmacy and ask for drug information and I would give him the information and Thin Mint Cookies. Then, I was ready to leave for my very first job after graduation and he told me that we should "go out for a drink" before I left. Yeah, right..young doctor wants to take me out. I washed his telephone number in my jeans, he called me anyway, and we have been married 14 years.

She was dating his college roommate, he was dating her college roommate. Everyone decided it would be better if rearranged. So he married her and the roommates married each other. It's been, roughly, 44 years for each. (That's the way I heard the story from my mom, anyway.)

[gretchen]

We met at a team-building meeting for a student organization in college. When it came time for our team to show off our problem-solving expertise by getting across the courtyard in only a few steps, he picked me up and carried me across the courtyard. I was smitten. We've been together for nine years (and married for just a few months).

[Doug]

I had a student programming job. My office was a conference room with the table stacked high with listings. She was working a temp job. She came in and asked what I did in there. No one else ever had. Been together 29 years, married 22.

Can't imagine a better story than "she had a blog and he read it".

[shucks]

She was the exotic girl two years ahead of me in college. Six years later at Harvard, we would see each other at parties and brunches and my day would be a bit brighter. I was training for the marathon and bumped into her after a run and we had a fun impromptu dinner. She called me up the night after the marathon and asked me out. Twenty-five years together in April.

[wab]

We met in a philosophy class, Metaphysics & Epistemology. As I usually walked in with a young math professor, she assumed that I was also a young faculty member. A few months later I was sitting in the student union, and she came to my table to ask if I knew anything about logrithms. I guess I knew enough as we've been together 40 years.

[Chipmunk]

He was a 2L, she was at orientation. They met at a law school mixer for the incoming class. It doesn't seem as long as the amount of time that has actually passed.

[stepheney]

She was walking the wrong way to find a fraternity house for an after hours party, and he was walking on the opposite side of the street. He came over and asked her if she was stalking the guys in front of her. She said no, he asked her to come to his party that night, she said yes and its been almost 4 years.

[jen]

They met because a mutual friend had a bad car accident. At the time, he was only 16 and still in high school. She was 18 and already in college. Neither was looking for or expecting to find "the one" -- by all accounts, they were too young and each had a lot of growing up to do. But, they've been together for 13.5 years. A little over 4 years ago they got married -- having finally grown up and found a place where they could actually live together (and having survived more years in a "long distance relationship" than either of them care to remember). The good friend who had had the bad accident was the best man at their wedding.

[abl]

Because they'd gone to the same college, they ended up with mutual friends (though not knowing each other). When a mutual friend was in town visiting, they met over a night of dinner, ice skating, and drinks. On the way to ice skating (mainly in jest, to cause a fun scene on the ice) she asked him to propose. Both then balked, knowing that it might be real. And 11 months later, it was (she didn't have to ask him to do it the second time).

[Elfie]

Ikea delivered my couch during business hours (when I wasn't there), and therefore wedged it into the entry of the house above my basement apartment. After getting it out of the upstairs door, I was trying to maneuver it down the curved, narrow stone steps into the basement (it was a victorian brownstone). He lived in the group house across the street and was watching through the kitchen window, placing bets with a friend on whether I could get this square peg through the round hole into the apartment. He said he was losing, so he came across the street and offered to help. It's been 17 years.

[Planethalder]

I had known him since college but we rarely saw each other and we mixed in different social circles. After college, we spent several years pursuing our own lives in different places around the world, only occasionally bumping in to one another at parties. One night in 2004, I was stting at the NFT about to watch the Wong Kar-Wai movie Days Of Being Wild when I looked across and saw, seated a couple of rows in front of me, a familiar figure. Now we're getting married.

[Lisa]

She had gone through a bad divorce, a bad failed relationship after divorce and wasn't looking for anything serious. Just someone to go out for drinks and a movie with. She put an ad on Yahoo Personals and he answered. They IM'd and emailed for two or three weeks. They finally decided to meet the Friday of the Labor Day week-end when they decided they were both the only people in the county who hadn't gone out of town.

When they met, they discovered they had even more in common; both had dogs named Max that were unusual breeds, both had distinctive unique black cars, both were adopted as infants and only lived 3 miles apart.

Oh, and his parents were long time customers at a business she had worked at for many years and were very familiar to her.

Seven years, the two Maxes have passed into Dog Heaven, adopted a child of our own, moved house twice now.

Corny, I know.