When my cousin married DH’s college friend, they visited our area on their honeymoon and invited us to dinner along with another college buddy. No sparks. For two years after that meeting my cousin encouraged DH to ask me out and he finally agreed. I couldn’t remember which one of the college buddies he was but I said I’d go out for pizza. The date was a dud, and when he left I closed the door and said out loud to myself, “He certainly wasn’t The One.” We were married exactly one year later.
@oneofthosemoms – what happened to turn things around?
@nottelling, I had already agreed to a second date (everyone deserves a second chance unless they are creepy!) and in those interim two weeks we had several fabulous phone calls. So by Date #2 we had developed a base to build on that wasn’t so shallow as the things from Date #1 that I was being unfairly judgemental about (clothing, manners, etc.)
H and I were on the same club volleyball team. He was the only single, never-married guy on our team. At the time, I was trying to find a good hairdresser and had one disastrous haircut and perm after another.
He finally called my office and left a message for me to call back. Somehow, the message was added to a huge stack of messages of folks interested in a foreclosure home, for which I was the commissioner. I returned his calls when I was ready to set the open house date and he invited me to go to the opera (one of my least favorite things in the world, at the time). Because of the delay in returning the phone call, the opera was that night so I reluctantly went, as I felt it would be rude not to. We had a GREAT time and just celebrated our 30th anniversary.
We had both dated quite a lot before meeting. He was my 4th serious beau, with several casual BFs as well.
He rescued me from a mild Pakistani bore…by joining in the conversation at a new grad student mixer.
We had some of the same friends in college. I was seeing his roommate, which wasn’t going all that well – roommate was/is a great guy, but both of us were clueless — anyway, DH was the first guy who didn’t make me nervous or feel like an idiot. He was so easy to be around, The roommate and I called it a day, but he eventually married ----my roommate. DH and I read at their wedding, even.
How I met my wife? This is not P.C., so be forewarned. But it’s all true without embellishment. We first met the summer before our senior year of high school. I was the boating specialist in charge of the lake at a day camp and she was a counselor for kindergarteners. I was also a bus counselor and she was on my route. She wore tiny leather bikinis at the camp and I was, shall we say, enamored of her looks and unhesitant to express that. She lived one town over from me and we dated the senior year of high school but didn’t hit it off because I was too fresh and too wild.
I went up to Boston for college and she stayed in Philadelphia. The summer before our senior year of college, I ran into her mother who told me she had just broken off a serious relationship. I immediately thought of her leather bikinis and decided to give her a call. We dated that summer but didn’t hit it off because I was still too fresh and too wild.
My senior year of college, my post graduation plans were to take a year and ride my 1951 chopped Harley Davidson cross country and up into and across Canada. My father conned me into applying to law school instead. I applied to one school. First day, I walked into orientation and there she was. Because she lived one town over, we started carpooling to school together. Though I was still thinking about her in her leather bikinis, we became best friends. I also became “best friends” with her mother who viewed me as a curiosity - a law student who spent all his time working out, riding his Harley and who was not impressed with the status of law school professors or with being in law school.
The beginning of the second year of law school, she was engaged to someone else from our law school class. He was everything I found repulsive in law students and decided it was not going to be. So I convinced him she and I were having an affair without ever saying anything direct and even though we were not. I just constantly mentioned in conversations that she and I carpooled together and how she and I had classes together that he was not in. I also spent a load of time at her parents house, even if she was not there, and would answer the phone when he called and tell him she was not available. He ultimately went insane and accused her of having an affair with me. She broke off the engagement, gave him the ring back and returned all the engagement presents from his family.
At the end of the first semester second year of law school, we had a Corporations final. She was convinced she bombed it. I told her she did fine. So we had a bet. If she got a C or worse, I had to take her to a restaurant of her choosing. If she got a B or better, she had to take me to a place of my choosing. I won the bet (regardless of the outcome, I would have won anyway, lol).
I made her take me to a hole in the wall bar called John and Peter’s place in New Hope Pa. It was renowned for bringing in cutting edge musical performers. It was also renowned for having clientele consisting exclusively of gays and 1%er motorcycle scooter trash. All the staff were openly gay. We spent the night sitting 10 feet away from George Thorogood, before he formed the Delaware Destroyers, and listened to slide blues guitar all night long. Throughout the night, our waiter kept sliding into the booth next to me, putting his hand on my leg and asking if there was anything he could get me. I kept telling him I wanted another pitcher of beer. At the end of the night, my future wife told me she had observed what had been going on and asked whether she should get a cab ride home. (She was clueless that this bet was actually the resumption of my pursuit of her.) I laughed and told her of course not, that I had been getting free pitchers of beer all night.
For the remainder of law school, we continued to date. She finally realized that “fresh” wasn’t a bad thing. I finally achieved my goals with that leather bikini. We got married a year after law school and 37 years later, with two grown kids, I still think about that summer we first met and how but for the serendipity of deciding to go to law school instead of going off on my Harley my life would have been so different.
I don’t know bikinis came in leather!
Correction: “didn’t”
Michael, you win. LOL. GREAT story!
My husband was divorced in 2010 and spent a couple of years trying to find someone on match.com. Eventually, he decided he was paying too much money for something that wasn’t working, so he tried okcupid.com, which is free. He hadn’t even finished creating his profile when I liked one of his pictures. He wrote back. He never corresponded with anybody else.
At my 15th college reunion, I had a chance to thank my classmate who founded okcupid. 
^^ love that Hanna.
We met 30 years ago today, on a July 4th boat trip around Manhattan celebrating the 100th anniversary of the Statue of Liberty. There were literally fireworks 
It is a long and involved story, which I will not bore you with, but I told my aunt the next day that I had met the man I was going to marry the previous evening.
This is such an entertaining thread!
We met in Antarctica. I was a graduate student doing research on an NSF grant. He was a navy helicopter pilot. We were married 18 months later. We’ve been married 20 years. Three teenage kids, two dogs, three cats. We’ve moved 6 times and also spent 3 months traveling the country in a 1966 Airstream trailer.
Some of the CC old-timers have heard this one before. H and I were Peace Corps volunteers in Africa. I saw him around a few times, heard he was an Ivy-leaguer, and I (typical midwesterner that I am 
) wrote him off as an east coast snob. After we’d been there more than a year, H was moved from the other side of the country to “my” village, to replace another guy who was finishing his service.
One afternoon, that guy dropped H off at my house to meet me–while he left to do some business nearby. H and I got into the most interesting conversation–I found out that H was Catholic, a southerner, super intelligent and entertaining, but not a snob. Our families had so many similarities–it seemed beyond coincidental. We talked for a couple hours–I was disappointed when the other volunteer came to pick H up. Right after they left, I had the weirdest feeling–I almost fainted and had to sit down. I said, out loud to the empty house, “There’s SOMETHING about that guy!” (And it wasn’t his looks–he had a scraggly beard, thick glasses. . .) He asked me to meet him several times over the next couple months, but I never managed to make it. He lived on the other side of the village and we had no transportation. There were some buses, but the schedule was irregular and I didn’t know exactly which house was his (no maps, no street names, no house numbers, no phones). Also, during this time, my neighbor told me she met “the new guy”–H--and that he was gay. . .
One day, after I’d failed to meet him again (I had a dental appointment in the capital city), I was on a hot and crowded bus, and I finally thought I’d identified H’s house! I impuslively jumped off at the next stop, intending to apologize to H for standing him up yet again. We stayed up all night talking, and I walked (4+ miles) to work the next morning. I was just walking on air, and I wasn’t tired at all! I felt like I’d met my other half–we are opposites in many ways. We spent most of our time together after that, and got engaged only 3 1/2 months later, (actually, he wasn’t gay. . .) married about 3 1/2 months after that. When H asked me to marry him, I said, “Let me think about it. . .” and I gave him my answer the next day. I knew I would not have an easy life with him. But I also knew it would never be boring. . .Turns out I was right about all that–it has been stormy/rocky at times, but we’ve made it 30 years so far. We have 7 kids, and have had 10 addresses in 5 states. Life is always interesting with H!
Now, if H were telling HIS version of how we met, it would probably go something like this: “She walked by me. . . Those legs! That walk! I had to follow. . .” (not exactly the tiny leather bikini, but something like that ;))
Love your story, @atomom.
This thread is so entertaining.
I’m happy I brought up the subject. I haven’t been around as long as many of you so I apologize to those who commented on how this subject has been discussed before. I made the title as descriptive as possible!
CC has been around awhile. There aren’t that many new topics. Who cares if this topic has been discussed before?
There are posters who have never particiapted in a thread like this. And for those who have written these kind of stories before, well some of us missed your stories or didn’t memorize them.
So, thanks to everybody who has participated. I enjoy reading all the stories.
@VaBluebird, this is a great thread. Thanks for starting it.
I’m still waiting to add my own story, even if not so inspiring as atomOM’s or many others.
@bookworm, what are you waiting for? The story is not going to change.
I promise you will get at least one like.
Oh, I mean waiting for the next great love. The last fiancé turned out all wrong, though we dated in HS, before graduate school, and got together after his divorce. That all sounds romantic, but it went wrong. He wanted the 16 year old me, not the 55 year old.