Long before eharmony, Match and JDate, there was the Washington Post classifieds - and I wrote a letter in response to his classified ad. That led to a phone conversation and then a blind date. Engaged the following summer and married a year later. Seems a bit archaic now - no googling the other person, no checking them out on social mdia, but it worked for us! 27 years next month.
Sitting with my best friend at the bar in Tequila Willies in Addison, TX waiting for our dinner table to be called…husband and his college roommates (Ole Miss grads) were sitting in the bar having an after dinner drink. H came up to us and spent the entire time speaking with my best friend, then when our table was called, he asked me out. I was so startled that he asked me I remember tripping over my words and almost said “who, me?” but I was cool and said “sure”. That was 31 years ago in August. When we moved into our current home 15 years ago and we were packing up, he pulled out a Tequila Willies cocktail napkin where I wrote my name and phone number…he kept it!
I remember it was during transitional period between urban cowboy and disco and my friend and I had spent every Thursday, Friday, and Saturday nights bar hopping/dancing. I remember saying to her “I’m so tired of seeing the same faces week after week - don’t these people have anything better to do?” Of course, it didn’t take too long before I realized I was there week after week to see them. So, we decided that was it, no more bars/dancing - we had other things to focus on in life. Two weeks later just meeting for dinner with my friend, I meet my future husband. So, I guess it’s true, when you stop trying so hard, you will find your soulmate.
In anatomy lab first year med school. I know, yuk. In reality, I was after his brain. I asked him to be my lab partner because I knew he had been a TA for anatomy the year before and was very knowledgable in anatomy. He refused to be my partner, as several people had already asked him. We have been happily married for 33 years.
My parents met at Roseland, the dance hall in NYC, in 1945. She was there celebrating her birthday with her parents and sister and brother-in-law. The family had arrived in the U.S. in 1939 from Danzig. My father asked her to dance and the rest was history.
Me? I’m single, never married, adopted my DD from China when I was 49.5 years old and she was 23 months old in 1998. And that’s history too!
In college. I was dating a friend of his! Happily married for 27 years now.
Partner for life but not partner for Anatomy, @rockymtnhigh. There are some bad jokes in their somewhere. 
I was a California teacher and saved my money every year in order to take a big trip each summer. I met a software engineer from London while crossing the Soviet Union on the Trans Siberian Railway. We carried on a long distance romance for a year before he left family, friends and an excellent job to move to the U.S to marry me. I was 41 at the time (never married) and to our amazement and joy I found myself pregnant two weeks after the wedding.
Some of these stories are good enough to be movie screenplays!
I love these stories. We are more interesting than I thought. 
It was not love at first sight. I came home from college and told my mother about this awful fellow who kept trying to talk to me after class and I just couldn’t stand him. The next term he signed up for almost all my classes. A few months later I brought him home to meet my family. I think we’ve been married 37 years, but I’m so old I’m losing track. He turned out to be my parents’ very favorite in-law. I think we have been together 40 years and I’m positive he is the most interesting and fascinating person I’ve ever met. And not at all awful.
My mother adored him so much, she even got over me breaking up with the red headed guy she was convinced would give her red headed grandchildren, something she told me she had always hoped for, but which just wasn’t enough of a reason for me to continue that relationship.
I can’t even remember the red head’s name. That kind of bothers me.
I was the surf-team stat-girl for my high school’s surf team; he was the judge. I knew who he was before I met him because he had been in the surfing magazines.
@nottelling I’ve always thought you were pretty cool, now I know you are cool! You’re a real life Gidget!
I was sitting in the high school library minding my own business when a bunch of my friends who were seniors drifted by. A couple of them sat down and started talking to us. The high school is still there. I feel like I should post a warning: all communications from here on might get serious.
I was working and taking one graduate course at the local university. I saw a sign at the gym for a player wanted for a men’s A-league soccer team and signed up. The team consisted of 10 pretty good guys and one very athletic and highly skilled woman. I got the biggest and most genuine smile when I introduced myself, though was too shy to ask her out for about another month. She was sort of dating one of the other guys on the team, something I didn’t know or else I probably would have never asked her.
We were married two years later. It’s odd being an athletic guy, but combining my genes with a crazy-strong female left me as the weakest of the clan (yes, that includes the Mrs. and my D who squats 300 lbs). That was 24 years ago.
H and I lived on the same floor of our dorm and were in the same major. I was a sophomore and he was a junior, but we were in a lot of the same classes since he had started out in a different major, so was a little behind in his requirements. We went to class and studied together, and began staying up practically all night every night just talking. We were just good friends to start, but eventually it became more than that :). We got engaged at the end of my senior year and married a couple of years after that. Our 26th anniversary is on Thursday.
DH lived on the same hall in college as my then bf. Bf was very insecure/inexperienced and kept asking DH for advice over everything that happened in our short relationship (it lasted less than 2 months). Bf broke up with me; DH asked ex-bf if it was OK if he asked me out and got the OK. Ex-bf had a hard time with me now dating his friend, but eventually got over it. We are all now still very good friends 40 years later. DH and I didn’t get married til I had my MS and he had finished dental school. Our 37th anniversary is next month.
It’s interesting how many people met their spouse in college.
Senior year of high school for me, he was almost 4 years older. I started noticing this guy staring at me across the pews at church. Never talked to him, my Dad was always in a hurry to scurry out of church and to the car.
One day after a Friday night football game, my friend and I were walking back to our car with hoards of other people leaving the football game. Two young guys started talking to us - one was especially friendly - I put two and two together later and realized this guy was the guy from church! But, still no formal introduction or name exchange.
A few months later I was riding bikes with the above friend in her neighborhood. Drove past a house a block from her house and “guy” was out in his driveway washing his car. He noticed us and said “hey!”. We stopped and chatted. He asked my name. My last name was REALLY complicated. I told him he could remember it by looking it up in the phone book (phone book - THAT’S HOW OLD WE ARE!) under the name of a certain restaurant in town - haha.
He remembered. I got a call. We went on a first date near the end of my senior year. I headed for college and he also moved from community college to Michigan State. We dated through all 4 years with him driving back and forth on weekends to my school or picking me up to take me home to our hometown for the weekend, me completing my bachelors, he finished bachelors/masters. Got engaged a few months out of college.
Will celebrate 35 years this year. We have three awesome children and now, one awesome daughter in law. I always say that we have been great parents - both individually and as a couple - but we could probably spend more time nurturing OUR relationship…but I guess that’s what these now partially “empty nest” years are for!!!
I was a freshman in high school, he was a junior. We met at a church group and saw each other in a group setting every week. I thought he was an annoying loser. He kept trying to date me. My younger sister was “in love” with him. We got to know each other, fell in love, got married at 20 and 21, and have been married for almost 28 years.
Daughter’s story is more interesting than mine…
D was moving from Undergrad in Baltimore to Grad School in Philadelphia. When she changed her profile location in Hello Cupid (a free dating site, yikes!), she met this amazing, normal, brilliant guy who shares a similar background, interests and beliefs. 2.5 years later they’re getting married (this October!).