Chinese Community Church. That’s really all I know; I’ve never really asked, and if I did I’m certain it would consist entirely of: “We met at Chinese Community Church.” They’re not real big talkers.
My dad and mom knew each other essentially all of her life (he’s three years older). The earliest story I know is that on his sixth birthday dad got a bike and was hit by a car riding it. He had a head injury and it was touch and go. He was laid up in bed for a week or so and none of his friends could visit because they didn’t want him to get excited. Mom was allowed to visit as she didn’t “excite him.” – That’s the way the story is always told at least.
They never dated until after dad had finished college (I think Mom had a year or so left) when they were paired together in a wedding party.
Mom and Dad met when he tripped over her while chasing a squirrel on the Rutgers campus (he was at Princeton, which I think was still single-sex, so they had to go elsewhere to find girls).
The much better story is Dad and Stepmom #2, who met in the waiting room of their respective therapists’ offices (a married couple who both practiced out of their home) while undergoing their respective divorces.
My mom and stepfather met in a bar. My mother was there with a platonic male friend, and spotted my stepfather from across the bar. Her friend caught her checking him out and said something to the effect of “Don’t even think about it, he’s bad news.” Mom jokingly said “I think I’ll marry him.”
Later that night, my stepfather came up to her and kissed her hand as an introduction. They’ve been together ever since, for over 30 years now.
My father was sponsored by some church group to come to the States after WW2 , he ended up in Kalamazoo, Michigan of all places;) where he met my 16 year old mom at a soda fountain, he was 18, she had just broke up with her long time boyfriend and boy next door. My father joined the USAF during Korea conflict and they got married when she was 17, They divorced 18 years later. Mom met her long time boyfriend, he was divorced… They were married for 16 year until he passed away.
(When my mother told her mother she was marrying her high school sweetheart, Gram said oh no not him, because she still thought of him as he was when he was younger)
Aww, I love these stories. 
My mom and her two sisters were singers in a band in Peterborough, Ontario, in the early 1950s. Dad was in the audience, and decided he had to meet her.
(My uncle played clarinet in the band–that’s how he met my aunt.)
I don’t think my parents ever met…
I kid! Met on a blind date, have been married 50some years.
My parents met the same way my husband and I met: at a college dance. They were engaged quickly and married within three months of meeting. Their relationship is a bit contentious (they are always sniping at one another) but they seem happy in their own way. They’ve been married over 40 now.
Dad had gotten his BS in botany, and decided to drive from Iowa down to Florida on his motorcycle (with trailer), collecting plant specimens along the way. He stopped in Jacksonville to attend a meeting of the local garden society, and one of the ladies - my grandmother-to-be - invited him home for supper, where he met the rest of the family. He sold the trailer in Jax, rode on down to Key West, sold the motorcycle there, and caught a ship to Cuba for a few months before heading to New York to start work on his MS. My mother moved up to NY to join him, and they were married in early '38.
They got divorced in '51 or '52, but settled their differences and remarried in '53. I was born about nine months after their second wedding…
My grandparents too. My grandma was 16 and my grandpa 15, I believe. They got married at 16 and 17. They had their three kids by about age 21 and were retired empty-nesters at around age 40 (my grandpa was a firefighter and at the time, you got full retirement after 20 years). They’ve been married about 60 years now, with a whole lot of years of leisure.
My parents met while drag racing. All the kids in town would meet up in a certain part of town and race, and there was this girl who could beat anyone. Yep, that was my mom! Dad heard about this girl and decided he had to meet her. Mom in her GTO smoked Dad’s Mustang, and they married a couple years later.
My maternal grandparents met on a small town street in TN; my grandfather had lost a bet w/ a friend in a bar and had to propose to the first woman he saw when they left. My 16 year old grandma was going somewhere w/ her stepmom and he walked up to her and said, “How’d you like to put your shoes under my bed?” I don’t know the timeline after that or how it turned from fulfilling a bet to getting married, but they had 10 kids together and were married till he died of a heart attack during surgery for black lung disease when my mom was 17.
One night my mom’s friends came over to her apartment and dragged her out to a bar. My dad was there and apparently came up and started hitting on her.
Their marriage didn’t make it two years, turns out a bar is a REALLY good place to pick up a husband that’s a raging alcoholic. Go figure.
This is my favorite story so far!
My parents met at work, not very exciting.
Both of my parents’ families lived in the same neighborhood in the Echo Park district of Los Angeles. My parents have known each other since they were both very young. They got married as soon as my father graduated from UCLA in 1971. My father was 21 at the time, my mother was 23. I was born the following year.
Dad was mom’s manager at Jack In The Box. They didn’t get along at first, but they’ve now been married 38 years.
My mom was in the Army in '66 working as a secretary in the Pentagon.
My dad was also in the Army, having been offered an opportunity to work as an ‘honor guard’ before he went to Vietnam - or he could go directly. (I am not sure what they are called, but the smartly dressed young men who escort high ranking officers, not tomb of the Unknowns honor guards.) Dad was the right height and good looking and he says this is why he was offered this. Dad often lies, and so does Mom, so maybe this is true in some fashion, but I am not vouching for it.
What is true is that the General my Mom secretaried for was working on some classified stuff, and when my Dad was there with his General that he was working for, he had to go to the bathroom, and my Mom had to escort him there and wait outside. Was apparently a good long walk and they had a chat on the way there and back.
Mom thought he was an arrogant jerk. (And…she was right.) The got to talking a bit more though because after that Dad was stuck in the waiting area while his General talked to her General. Mom set him up with her barracks roommate. They double dated for a while with Dad’s barracks roommate. Then one night Mom’s roommate announced she’d prefer Mom’s date, so they swapped (hey, it was the 60s!).
Dad was going off to Vietnam shortly after, and convinced he would die there. He wanted to have a child so at least something of him would live on. He liked Mom, but was not crazy about her. My Mom has body image issues and had a really crap childhood where being cared for and loved was really lacking, so I suspect when my father at the height of his being good-looking asked her to marry him, she jumped at it. They married in February of 68, I was conceived in March or early April, Dad went to Vietnam in June (the week my Mom lost my twin - I have his letters - he was such a jerk to Mom even then) and I was born in December. Dad blames me for having to do an extra tour so Mom could have me in the base hospital. I do not know how true this is, either.
They married without telling their parents. I have my Grandaddy’s very stern letter to my father about what a jerk he was being, and my much beloved great grandmother’s and great great aunt’s letters welcoming Mom to the family.
They divorced when I was nine. My Dad was a truck driver and cheating on Mom, she caught him sending money to the woman via ComCheck while we were having trouble making rent and buying groceries. So that was that.
There’s a theme here, can you spot it? I haven’t spoken to my dad in about a decade. To be fair though, Mom is also a jerk, but in very different ways, and just as unreliable a narrator, so while much of/parts of this could be true I cannot vouch for anything I have not read in the letters they sent each other while Daddy was in Vietnam or letters they received in Washington DC from my father’s Mississippi family - though oddly, not from my Mom’s California or South Dakota family.
In a 6 months TBC quarantine. Morbidly romantic, if you ask me.
My parents met in an Austrian refugee camp in 1956. They had each escaped, independently, from Hungary during the failed revolution that year against the Communists.
I could see this as a movie plot, really.