I believe my parents’ story to be fairly unusual and would like to hear other accounts of romantic meetings. I guess this would include other relatives, or your own romances also.
My parents’ story goes like this;
In the early '50s, my father belonged to a road band that traveled the North Central United States. The members of this band, all male, bunked in the bus which was their means of transportation.
On a day in late May of 1953, the bus pulled up to a restaurant in Valentine, Nebraska. All the guys but my dad went in to eat. Dad, besides playing trombone and doing a little singing, also arranged much of the music they played, and he was catching up on some of that. After some time, the guys still hadn’t returned, so Dad went in to check things out.
Turns out they were all flirting with a cute little waitress (my mom). My dad ordered his standard, a BLT with peanut butter, and introduced himself. He did some high-powered flirting himself (nibbled her ear) and got my mom’s phone number. That night, my dad called my mom from where the band was playing, talked for a while, and asked her to marry him. Ten days later, they were married in Sioux Falls, SD. When she died in March of 1991, they had been married almost 39 years.
My maternal grandmother was a bit of a barfly. On one of her trips to the local pub, she struck up a conversation with a man, who confided that his daughter had died recently and his (now former) son-in-law was lonely. My grandma got the guy’s number and set up a blind date for her daughter with the widower, and thus my parents hooked up.
My hubby and I met the age-old way of posting to the same USENET group way back in 1994.
My parents met in the Air Force, stationed in Texas, in 1966.
Mom was a nurse, a cute, dark-haired, sassy Puerto-Rican from Astoria,Queens.
Dad was a supply clerk, your All-American, blonde-haired Southern boy from central Louisiana.
My dad had been persuing my mother for a couple of months, seeing her on several bases they both happened to be stationed at. Mom shot him down without fail.
Mom was asked to go on a date by another Officer and agreed. Turns out the other Officer was my Dad’s roommate, so he convinced the guy to let him take his place. They went to dinner and a basketball game (Mom grudingly went along when he came to pick her up).
They were married six months later and continued their tours in the Air Force for 3 more years, being stationed together, mostly in the Philipines and Hawaii. Then I came along, then my sisters.
They were divorced 15 years ago, but remain the best of friends.
My dad was one of a group of rabble-rousing rowdies that routinely disturbed the peace in postwar Spokane, Washington. Prominent among these rowdies was a group of brothers, most of whom were good friends with my dad. One of the brothers was married. My dad recalls going with the married brother to his house to pick something up. They had spent all afternoon in a tavern and were going out again to do some more drinking. The married brother went into his house to get whatever it was but came out again, moving fast. His wife followed him out, carrying a kitchen chair, which she threw at him. (She missed.)
That was my mom.
Her then husband was killed in a car wreck a few years later and she and my dad started going out and have now been married nearly fifty years. She has never, that I know of, thrown a chair at my dad, but he’s always known she’s capable of it.
My parents met in the MIT library. My mom worked at MIT and was doing Xerox copies in the library that day, while my dad was there taking a break from working on his ScD. (Doctorate of Science). At the time my mom was 33 and my dad was 23. This year my mom is 60 and my dad is 50. They’ve been married for 23 years now.
During WWII. My dad, much to his disgust, was refused for enlistment because he worked for the phone company and a higer priority was set on building a fast communication network after Pearl Harbor.
He was sent to a small town to establish the phone link, and boarded at my grandmother’s boarding house. (Fact: they lost the farm during the Depression, and grandmother–who was in a wheelchair due to a stroke since she was 36–ran a boarding house.)
He met my mom, who helped around the place during her college break. They married…and really shouldn’t have. War fever! Two more mismatched people never lived, but there ya have it.
My father was dating my mother’s roommate. One night, the roommate talked Mom into cooking and serving an intimate little dinner for the roommate and my father. The food must have been good, because he started dating Mom within a couple of weeks.
She had to move out of the apartment, but apparently it was worth it. Their 36th anniversary is on the 29th.
It was a Friday in 1954 and my dad, then age 17, came into the Woolworth’s where my mom, age 15, was working behind the lunch counter. He ordered a hot dog and she, seeing his Catholic Central High School ring, wouldn’t give it to him. They’ve been married 41 years.
My parents met in a bar, introduced by a mutual friend who suggested they talk about stock car races. Luckily both decided to go to the bathroom at the same time, because when they came back out all of my dad’s friends were getting arrested.
Clueless friend: “Hey, aren’t you guys coming to jail with us?”
Dad: “Um…no…”
They decided they’d better leave and went to another bar, where my dad proceeded to get so drunk he couldn’t find his car (which he left at the other bar). The next day, my dad called my mom, but she didn’t remember what he looked like. They set up the date, Dad specifying that he’d be “the guy with the white bellbottoms.” He asked her to marry him a week later (Mom’s explanation: “It was the early 70s, and I wasn’t really doing anything else important at the time.”), but unfortunately my mom discovered that he was already married soon afterwards when some of her property was being destroyed by a mysterious woman (his wife). He immediately got divorced, and they married.
Miraculously, it’s been a very happy marriage for 29 years. I guess this is one of those situations where I’m supposed to do as they say, not as they did.
After World War II, my dad was in a veterans hospital in Calgary for quite a few months. He had had his knees blown apart by shrapnel. When he returned to Edmonton he was on a city bus that was quite crowded. He saw my mom get on and she was standing, barely able to reach the grab bar above, so he stood up and gave her his seat. The rest is history. Five kids, many years married before their deaths.
I love their story because he was from a very poor family and she was from quite a prominent family. The chances of them getting together otherwise would have been very slim. I still have the love letters he wrote her and their first valentines.
In the early sixties, my father was a teenaged, greasy little hood from the wrong side of the tracks (I say that with much affection). My mom was a cute little teenybopper from middle-class suburbia.
Picture The Outsiders. Dad was Matt Dillon and Mom was Diane Lane. He saw her at the skating rink with her friends, and he was with his car club buddies. He turned on his duck-tailed macho bravado. A few months later they were married. And incidently a few months after that, my sister was born. You do the math.
They’ve now been married for coming up on 37 years.
I e-mailed this thread site to my sister so she could read about these romantic meetings also. Keep those stories coming!
A little side story here: my first husband drove the bus I rode to work every morning; that’s how we met. We used to chat and flirt, and I would occasionally leave notes or snacks taped up on the bus stop sign for him (his bus passed my workplace every hour). The marriage lasted ten years, and I have three beautiful daughters to show for it.
My mom grew up in Poland during WWII. Sometime in the 50’s, she decided to work on her English (she wound up knowing 7 languages) and wrote to several Canadian colleges looking for a penpal. My dad was a part time student at one of the colleges, saw her ad on the bulletin board, and on a whim, wrote to her. They wrote back and forth for several years. I guess my dad had never really intended to marry ever, but was quite a flirt. He told her that it was too bad she was in Poland, because if she was in Canada, he’d marry her. I guess that was enough, because she wrote back and said that she was on her way. He arranged the whole wedding, including her wedding dress, before she got here 6 days before the wedding.
It must have worked out, because they had 3 kids, and remained married until she died 16 years later. My dad still hasn’t remarried.
My Dad was a 20 year old shipfitter stationed aboard the USS John R. Craig out of San Diego. My mom was a 16 year old high school student from Harbison Canyon – a little town some miles east of the shipyard. Dad and his best friend, Wimp, were dated up for a Saturday with two hot chicks from the canyon. When they got to the Canyon Dad’s date stood him up. Dad wanted to go back to the ship, but Wimp still had a date and didn’t want to cancel. There were still a few hours in which to rustle up a new date for Dad so as not to ruin the evening. My mom, who had had a babysitting gig cancel at the last minute, was literally the only available girl in Harbison Canyon. When they went over to her house to see if she could go, she was underwhelmed by my Dad’s charms – he was (and is) a redhead and she had a red-headed brother who had given her merry hell for years. However, she was willing to go out with Dad – just this once! – as a favor to Wimp’s date, Thelma. Dad was a little more enthusiastic – he says he just remembers big tits and a ponytail from that first meeting – but not much; he was still kinda disappointed about the other girl. He changed his tune when he saw mom in her big date togs – she lost the ponytail, and wore bright red lipstick and a red Suzy Wong dress. They went to Coronado on the ferry and had dinner at a chinese restaurant. By the end of the evening, they were in love. Less than a year later, they were married. When we were kids they used to take us to Coronado on the ferry and show us that restaurant. They’ve been married 43 years and I’ve never heard them fight.
My dad was a sailor. He was stationed near Pensacola. He went to church with a buddy. Happened to be my mom’s church. He asked her if they could give her a ride home. She said no, since there were two of them, and a girl didn’t get into a car with 2 guys. (Early '60’s) So he kept going to the church and they kept meeting and eventually she rode home with just him. They dated for a while, then when Dad was being sent to B-school in Tennessee, he just kept kind of including her in his plans. Finally one day, Grandmother suggested that since he got paid Friday, maybe they should get married that weekend. They did. He was 22, she was 16. They were married for 21 years before they divorced. (When they grew up, they grew out of “love” even though they still love each other as people and friends and parents of their children.)
