My father was in the Air Force (Little Rock AFB - early 60s) and my mother was a carhop at one of the local places he used to frequent.
My Dad worked for the phone company, checking/repairing phone lines. One day he stopped off for lunch. The clerk (Mom-to-be) thought he was good looking, got nervous, and in good sitcom tradition, managed to not only spill his drink but break the glass it was in. She apparently had done that before, and her manager was about to fire her, but Dad stepped in, apologized for having broken the glass himself, and got her out of trouble. They married about 8 months after that.
Same here, except it was a Ponderosa Steakhouse.
My father was dating a friend of my mother’s. Mother was in a car accident that crushed both legs and had a partial amputation of her right foot. The friend came to the hospital to visit Mother and dragged Dad along. As they left, he asked if he could bring her anything if he came back. She said maybe some magazines, so Dad, being a smart-ass brought her some issues of Workbench magazine and Field and Stream. She countered by giving him some Ladies Home Journal and Redbook. He dumped his girlfriend, she dumped her boyfriend and they got engaged.
They were married for almost 50 years when Dad died of cancer.
StG
My parents met in high school and ended up doing the high school sweetheart thing <3, kept in contact during college, then went all out after dad got settled in the military. Oh, and dad majored in Elementary Education like my mom but never taught - Army Officer Candidate School would take you with any Bachelor’s degree - any whatsoever.
Mine met at work…
It was the chimp house at the zoo, mind 
My maternal grandfather always claimed he first saw my grandmother at a knobbly knees contest, but I have no idea if that’s true. I don’t think she won, anyway.
My paternal grandparents were both Lancashire cotton workers, and met on the way back from a ‘wakes week’ trip organised by t’mill to t’seaside. My great-grandmother and great-aunts got on the coach together, but my grandfather was hustled off to a different coach. They spent the whole trip back wondering what was going on, then when they got off at the other end, there he was, and he’d got hisself a girlfriend!
According to my great-grandmother (a proper terrifying old matriach), ‘that schemin’ Hilda’ talked someone into rearranging the seating, so the guy she liked the look of got sat next to her. My great-grandmother died age 99, and resented ‘losing’ one of her kids right to the end- he was the only one of her 4 children who ever even dated.
My dad and his friend grew up together in the country and when it came time to go to university they shared an apartment in town. My mother was a town girl and my dad’s friend asked her on a date. They didn’t hit it off, but she got introduced to my dad and she liked him better. I sometimes wondered what life would have been like with my dad’s friend as a father instead…
They were at the same party.
Pretty boring…except Dad had gone there with a date, and was so taken with Mom, he spent the evening with her instead of the girl he’d brought.
Circumstantial evidence suggests they met at the bank where they both worked.
In college–Mom was on a work study program and worked in the cafeteria. She gave him extra helpings of food. She couldn’t believe the handsome guy actually talked to her. And by handsome, I mean the most stereotypically 1970s getup you ever saw. We have pictures.
They knew each other from childhood – two families, mutual friends, living some miles apart. They married a year or two post-World War 2 – I gather, quite “out of the blue” and a surprise to everybody. In childhood and in her teens, Mum had been a tomboy, with no apparent interest in pairing-off stuff. During WW2, she worked in a civilian capacity for the army, home-based; Dad was away in the merchant navy. Seemingly no situation of romance between them, during the war.
It would appear that they had a reasonably happy dozen years together, including producing three kids, until Dad’s sudden and unfortunately early death.
My parents give two conflicting stories with some overlap:
In both stories, my dad was working as an assistant manager at a K-Mart in Uvalde, Texas. My mom’s version of the story involves a cute but somewhat shy employee flirting with her while helping her do some shopping for her family.
My dad’s version of the story involves Christmas Eve, five minutes after closing time, and this insane woman beating on the front doors of the store begging to be let inside so she can buy Christmas gifts for her siblings at the last minutes.
It is somewhat amusing that most of my aunts and uncles on Mom’s side of the family find Dad’s story more plausible. 
Oh, and they’ve been together, let’s see, 7-6-13 - 10-6-78 = 34 years, 9 months, plus maybe a year of courtship.
My grandfather was a construction foreman in the late 70’s, and my dad worked for him. He went home with grandpa for lunch or dinner one day, and when my grandmother met him (my father), she set about immediately setting him up with her oldest daughter. Dad finally gave in, and went on “the worst date in history.” Upon dropping off his date at the end of the evening, he met her younger sister- my mother. The rest is history.
I’ve known this story for some time, and have always found it cute, but I recently discovered that my mom was only 16 at the time! (Dad would have been 20)
Thanks all. There have been some good stories here.
From what I can tell of what I know about my other ancestors, there wasn’t much mystery. They all seem to have lived in the same community as each other for the most part. Northwestern Arkansas for my mother’s side, New York-state farmers for centuries on my father’s, mostly in the Albany area, but one ancestor just happened to be the richest man in New York City 300 years ago. (Unfortunately, his riches failed to make it down the line this far.) He had a large farm in what is now Greenwich Village, and his daughter married their next-door neighbor.
But my paternal grandfather and grandmother are a bit of a mystery. He was born in 1876 in the Albany area, graduated from Columbia around 1900, then followed his brother out to California, to a small town called Hollywood, where they ran their own hardware business. My grandmother came from the same small town, but she was also born about 1900, about the time my grandfather graduated from Columbia. I’m guessing he must have seen her on trips back home, where he may have seemed a bit exotic, having gone all the way out West. He died just a few years before I was born, so I never met him. She lived until I was eight, but I only saw her once or twice, as we didn’t live in California. In fact, she died from a sudden heart attack on the train while traveling to Texas to visit us. So I never knew their exact story.