It’s Valentine’s Day, and this month’s blog is celebrating love and romance by bringing you first-hand accounts of “How we met.” Read on and enjoy.
Carolyn Ernest: Bob and I met in the operating room at New England Deaconess Hospital. I was a nurse and Bob was an OR tech. After working together for five months, we went to the department’s Christmas party. We started dating and married seven months later. That was 59 years ago. We are blessed.
Chuck Smith: Back in 1963 I got a phone call at 2:30 a.m. from a friend enjoying a wedding rehearsal party in another city. After telling me that he had a girl he wanted me to meet, he handed the phone to the young lady who lived in my area. My experience with blind dates had made me skeptical, but after she returned to her parents’ home, I called (unenthusiastically) to see if she would join me for dinner. She did, and I fell in love with Betsy on that first date. We married the next year, 57 years ago.
Carol Nasr: Ali was a debonair, man-about-town, when we met in New York City just after I graduated from college. Ali’s friend wanted Ali to meet his sister who was staying with me while visiting NYC. As it turned out, Ali was introduced to two young ladies, his friend’s sister and me. In November while I was visiting my parents, now living in The Hague, Ali proposed marriage in a letter. I hesitated before calling him to accept. On December 28, 1965, six months after our first meeting, Ali and I had a fairy-tale wedding in The Hague, complete with a horse and carriage. It has been a fairy-tale ever since.
John F. Sobke: In 1965, I attended the Oktoberfest in Munich. At 10:30 a.m. I was working on my liter of beer and found myself sitting between two girls. I wondered which one I should ask to walk around the grounds with me. One was complaining about her stomach, so I turned to the other (Marilyn) and popped my question. To my delight, she said, “yes.” We spent the rest of the day together, and I had a premonition that I was going to know her for a very long time.
Thus, began a beautiful courtship. Marilyn and I skied, walked in the woods, read Hemingway, and ate together every evening. I finally gained up enough courage to ask her to marry me. Again, to my delight, she said “yes.” I had run through my savings taking her out to dinner every night, so we started eating spaghetti in my apartment. Eight months after that first meeting, we were married in the chapel at Fort McNair in Washington, D.C.
Don McCulloch: I first met my wife after climbing up to a second story balcony and entering her office through a sliding glass door. It was not exactly love at first sight, but I did make a strong first impression. Our first real date was at a French restaurant in downtown Chicago. We were the only customers, so our waiter brought extra wine and sat down with us. All three of us got tipsy. Margaret and I married a year later. After the wedding reception ended, I left Margaret for an hour sitting in her wedding gown in the hotel lobby while I hunted for my car. The car had been parked by my “can’t remember where” uncle in “an adjoining racetrack parking lot.”