Sunday, March 15, 2009

How They Met




Looking for a new, exciting way for your hero and heroine to meet?
I thought a few real-life stories might inspire your creative side.
(This was another one of Tia Dani’s brilliant blog ideas.) I usually begin these posts with my own experiences. If I’m going to ask you to share, it’s only fitting that I should, too.
The only problem is I’m single. Oh, well.

Let’s read how these successful romances began




I met my hubster at Oktoberfest. I was doing the chicken dance on a picnictable. My hubster and his brother came over to talk to my girlfriend (heworked with her), and his brother wanted to meet her. We got married, and his brother married my girlfriend a month later!


I was dancing in a night club, and this man kept staring at me from the bar. So I went to him and said, "Do you dance, too? Or do you just stare?" "I can dance," he said, and off we went to the dance floor. We've been happily married for fifteen years.

Vijaya Schartz
Girls with Guns, Romance with a Kick
http://www.vijayaschartz.com




I met my husband in fencing class. I took fencing because I wanted to write fantasy; I wanted to learn how to use a sword so I could write about it realistically. There was this six foot three guy in the class who liked to read the same books I did, and who walked me to my car and worried about me being safe. Two weeks into the class, we were dating, a week after that, we were bonded for life (including physical side, hmmm). Or, as my husband likes to say "she stabbed me, and it was true love." We're still married after all this time, and we both know our way around an epee. :-)

Jennifer Ashley
The Madness of Lord Ian Mackenzie
Book 1 in a new historical series
Leisure Historicals, May 2009
http://www.jennifersromances.com





Tina, this is a fun question -- I can't wait to see all the answers!I met Pete at an EST-encounter type weekend called Lifespring, where people were lined up listening to instructions for the next exercise like in a Virginia reel, each facing the person across from you.He and I were facing each other, listening to the teacher, and for the first (and only) time in my life I saw blue-and-green sparks shooting off all around someone...this guy whose nametag I made a point of squinting at because I knew he was someone I wanted to meet.After class we left the hotel classroom together and he suggested we go get a room. I explained I already had a commitment to this guy I'd been dating since college, although the relationship wasn't going anywhere, and Pete insisted that "feelings like this transcend commitment." (Great line!)But when I still said I couldn't do that until breaking up with Mike, Pete agreed we could just be friends...and we sat on the hotel lawn, talking until all-hours. The next day I broke up with Mike, and have been with Pete ever since.Laurie, enjoying the memory :)

Laurie Schnebly Campbell, www.BookLaurie.com







Hubby and I met at a tradeshow in Chicago. We were both working at the same booth and when our eyes met....lust-Er- I mean love at first sight. We've been married almost 14 years now.
Web of Deceit.
Kim Watters
www.kimwatters.com





Okay Tina, you asked for it. I met Bob through the Rotary Club. Uh-huh, that's right. They were doing a professional exchange with a club in Scotland and I interviewed and out of 120 people I was picked to be on the team of four non-Rotarians (that was me) and one Rotarian (that was Bob). So we all got nicknames. I named him The General and he named me Trouble. After six months of preparation, which is when I found out he lived 5 minutes down the road from me, we left for Scotland for 4 weeks. It was two weeks into the trip that he and I started our relationship on the beautiful island of Aaron. We stayed up the whole night walking around the island, watching the moon rise and falling in love. But it made things complicated because as a Rotarian he wasn't allowed to fraternize with the rest of the team members. Yikes! So we would slip away after the rotary business for the day was completed, usually around 11:00pm! and stay up all night. On top of that we were both going through divorces so technically we were still married though separated. It was amazing. We still go back to Scotland about every four years to visit our friends there and remember what we did ;-)Alexis WalkerHIGHLAND MAGIC Finally A Bride Contest 2nd Place






Hi
You asked so here's how I met my hubby.

I worked in a small finance company and part of my job was to call people to remind them they hadn't made their payment timely (I hated it but.....that's what they paid me for). Anyway, I called this man and told him about his late payment. Well.....he had some choice words for me because he claimed he did pay on time but he would come down to the office and show me the cancelled check. While I waited for this man to come into the office, I did a little more research and found.....I had applied his payment to the wrong account (the names were very similar, the amounts were the same and the due date was the same - easy mistake). When he walked into my office, the first thing I noticed right away was that he was a "bad boy", you know, the kind of guy your mother always warned you about). He had that strut, that attitude, not to mention, he was cute (and angry)! I was immediately....intrigued.

We ran into each other all the time after that. It was a small town. He worked for the florist up the street. I'd catch him in the bank delivering flowers and ask, "Hey, where's mine?" and I'd have flowers the next day. We'd run into each other at the local pizza joint and share a slice or a cup of coffee at the shop around the corner. It was fun, it was sweet and in no time at all, we were friends then more than friends then despite my mother's warnings ('cause he really was a bad boy and a biker to boot), I fell head over heels. Now here we are, thirty years later (we've been married for 28), and I'm still head over heels for my bad boy.

Donna WarnerAKA Marie PatrickAngel in the Moonlight, Whiskey Creek Press, April 2008History Sizzles in a Marie Patrick Novel





Hi Tina,When I was a senior in high school, I met the younger brother of a neighbor. His name was Tom. Nothing came of it because Tom was too shy to ask me out. Then about a year later, Tom pointed me out to his younger brother Luke and told him he wanted to ask me out. Luke said something like, "Well go ask her out." Tom said "I can't." So Luke said "If you won't I will." Luke swaggered up to me and asked me out probably just because he was in between girlfriends. I recognized the name because I knew his brother, the neighbor. I ended up dating Luke for for a few months and even though he was a nice guy, there was no real chemistry. During that time, I got to know Tom because several of the brothers in this family all lived together and I used to kinda hang out at their house. Tom and I got along great and joked around a lot. Things cooled off (not that they ever got hot) between Luke and me. Then about two years later, I met Tom at a singles activity. He ended up driving me to a singles camping trip a week or so later. Something special happened during the drive as we talked. We realized we had everything in common - not interests, per se but values and lifelong plans and goals. We began spending every day together. Two weeks after that first date, he asked me to marry him. The whole thing seemed so sudden, and I had other plans that didn't include marriage. I was also sorta done with guys because I'd been burned in a couple of really disastrous relationships. Plus, I was young - only 21. So I agonized over it for three days before I realized he was the one for me and I would never find anyone better suited for me. And all my plans no longer seemed so important compared to spending my life with him. I said yes. And the rest, as they say is history. Oh, and don't worry about Luke, he married someone else and she was expecting their first baby by the time Tom and I got married. Tom and I have been married for 21 years and we have six (yes, 6) children.-- Donna HatchBelieve in happy endings…"The Stranger She Married"a Regency Romance Novel with a twist of intriguepaperback at amazon.com-
book at www.thewildrosepress.comhttp://www.donnahatch.comhttp://donnahatch.blogspot.com/http://historicalhussies.blogspot.com/http://www.myspace.com/donnahatchhttp://www.facebook.com/people/Donna_Hatch/1053967713






My parents first met at church youth camp in Ohio when he was fifteen, and she'd just turned sixteen. You know how people record marriages and things like that in Bibles? Dad recorded their "marriage" in his Bible, with the camp pastor supposedly having performed it and various fellow campers as witnesses; they didn't actually have a ceremony, you understand, but he wrote it all down. They saw each other occasionally at first, at other statewide youth events, because they lived in different counties. I don't know when Mom actually met his mother, but Grandma said she thought at first that Mom was "such a quiet girl." Mom was afraid to say anything in front of Grandma, because Grandma was an English teacher, and Mom was afraid she'd say something ungrammatical. She said she hardly ate when she and Dad first went out too, that he would end up eating his hamburger and hers. A couple years after they met, Mom went off to Anderson College in Indiana, while Dad was beginning his senior year of high school, and she says he wrote to her every day. Then he went to the same college, where they lived on opposite sides of the same dorm. At night the doors would be locked between the men's and women's halves, but Dad would slide papers under the door, so that Mom could type them for him. They married in the fall of their senior year, six years after their first meeting, and I was born just after Mom graduated, on Dad's first day of summer school for his final class. They've been married for thirty-nine years.VarinaActive member of the Desert Rose Chapter of RWA





Thanks for sharing, ladies!!
Now, let’s hear from some of you.
How did you meet your spouse?


Happy Writing,
Tina LaVon

8 comments:

Anonymous said...

What lovely stories!

I loved them all.

Erin Quinn said...

What a fun topic! I met my husband at work. I'd just moved to San Diego from Colorado and started a new job. I pulled into the parking lot and right next to me was this tall, dark and handsome man driving a convertible porche. I remember calling my girlfriend and saying I thought he was spanish or something exotic like that. We started dated almost immediately.

When I told him how cool I thought his Porche was, he looked at me funny and said, "Blondie, I think this could be love." Turns out my Spaniard in the Porche was a Mexican in a Karman Ghia Volkswagon. :-) We've been married 21 years now.

Tina Swayzee McCright said...

Erin,
I think that last line was the funniest thing I have ever read. LOL

Pat Cochran said...

I met Honey 50 years ago at a party. He knew some of my sibs, our group mixed and mingled with the people he was with. At the break, everyone sat except for our new friend. I invited him to share my chair and he did. On the way home, his friend indicated an interest in asking me out. Honey told him to forget about that because he (Honey) was going to marry me! Two years later we were married-it's 48 years, 4 children
and 10 grandchildren for us!

Pat Cochran

Anonymous said...

What a great idea! Lots of cute ideas for how to meet.

Tina Swayzee McCright said...

Thanks, Donna.

Pat, that is so cute. Isn't it funny how some people just know who they are going to marry right away.

Terry Odell said...

Hubby was the lab TA for a biology class I had to take in order to fulfill requirements for my teaching credential. There were only 3 females in the lab section: one was engaged; one was involved; and then there was me.

That was 40 years ago.

Tina Swayzee McCright said...

Terry,
At least that narrowed down his choices. LOL