Anne of Simply2Moms shares her love story for Valentine’s Day. Find out how she met her husband and the twist that almost kept them apart!
Happy Valentine’s Day everyone!
AnnMarie and I thought it would be fun to share our love stories with you to celebrate. You can read AnnMarie’s love story here.
Don’t you love hearing how other people met and fell in love?
Those kinds of stories are some of my favorites.
Because people just light up from inside when they share them.
You can almost feel the love shining through their eyes and smiles!
So I want you to picture me right now with a sappy smile on my face while I’m typing.
Cause that’s what I’m doing.
And the smile goes all the way up to my eyes.
I was not looking for love…
After graduating from college, I worked for Macy’s as an assistant manager in the Juniors department.
They filed for bankruptcy and my position was dissolved.
I found a job to make some money while looking for a “real” job.
It was selling Rainbow vacuums.
Door to door.
The job market was not good in the early 90s!
About a month into my vacuum sales job, I was doing a demonstration for potential new hires.
There was this cute guy in the group who kept smiling at me.
He decided to work there for the summer because his internship had fallen through.
He still had one semester left at college.
There was a group of 5 of us who were newer to the company.
After work, we would often go out for a drink together at the mall across the street.
Oh. Did I mention that I was engaged?
Yeah.
Plot twist, eh?!
I always invited my fiancee to join us.
And he always declined.
Sometimes our little group would go out as teams to canvas neighborhoods for potential prospects.
Quite a few times, I was paired up with that cute guy (his name was Kevin, by the way).
I may have been engaged, but I wasn’t blind.
Besides, he had a long-term girlfriend so it was perfectly safe.
One Enchanted Evening…
About 6 weeks after we began working together, Kevin and I went to do a demonstration for a potential client together.
It was in a sketchy area and I was uncomfortable going alone.
He didn’t have a demonstration scheduled that evening so he offered to come along.
Then, the people blew us off!
There was no one home when we arrived.
Or at least no one answered the door.
We didn’t want to go back to the office and make phone calls, so we went to a driving range to hit some golf balls.
And then stopped at Baskin Robbins for some ice cream before heading back to the office.
It was the end of June.
It was hot out.
And we sat in his old El Camino eating our ice cream in the air conditioning while listening to John Miller call the Orioles game.
After a while, he said he needed to tell me something.
Y’all? I had some serious butterflies going on in my belly.
Because even though I was engaged to someone else, I was feeling a pull towards this guy.
I had a suspicion about what he was going to say.
He turns to me and tells me he’s developed feelings for me.
And he asked me to choose him and give us a chance.
I didn’t know what to say.
This is not something you can really prepare for!
I told him I wasn’t ready to break my engagement.
Yes, I was attracted to him too, but I was afraid to leave my comfortable relationship from college for an exciting “what if.”
I suggested we give it a few weeks and see if we were still having feelings for each other before hurting the other people in our lives.
Do you believe in fortune cookies?
The next day I confided to an older woman who worked in our office. I asked her what I should do.
She said it was a decision I had to make for myself.
She wisely reminded me, marriage is a huge commitment.
And if I was having feelings for someone else when I was engaged, maybe that relationship wasn’t as strong as it should be.
I continued to waffle.
I truly cared for my fiancee who I’d met almost 3 years earlier.
It was a long distance relationship most of that time, but we got engaged soon after I graduated.
After all, all our friends were getting engaged so we should too, right?
But after our conversation, I kept wondering “what if.”
And my friend’s words stuck with me.
About a week later we were all eating Chinese food for dinner at the office while working the phones to schedule demonstrations.
I opened my fortune cookie and the little slip of paper inside said: There is yet time enough for you to take a different path.
I’ve never put any stock in fortune cookie fortunes.
But, I couldn’t ignore how I felt when I read that verse.
Yes, breaking an engagement would be hard.
But we hadn’t even made any real plans for the wedding, even after having been engaged for almost 6 months.
Wasn’t that saying something right there?
And a divorce down the road would be much harder.
Because my friend was right: this should be a time in a relationship when we aren’t feeling these kinds of doubts!
God can talk to us in different ways, and sometimes He might speak to us through a fortune cookie.
A good friend pointed out years later that He’ll meet you where you’re at.
Changing Our Course
Kevin broke up with his girlfriend the week after our conversation.
I ended things with my fiancee the day after opening that fortune cookie.
And we both took a chance on a new relationship, together, the next day.
We were inseparable the rest of the summer until he returned to college five and a half hours away.
I drove to Virginia Tech to see him a few times that semester, he came home a few weekends, and we met in the middle once.
Our feelings only got stronger for each other the more time we spent together, and apart.
I think we spent more time talking and sharing during the first few months than I had with my ex during the three years we’d been together.
After he graduated, we got an apartment together.
Because let’s face it, when you know, you know.
We both felt a sense of inevitability with each other.
Some people might call it being soul mates.
I don’t know if there’s a name for it? But we connected with each other in a way neither of us had ever experienced before.
We just clicked.
Making it Official
In April of 1994, we went to my college’s Alumni Weekend.
It was so fun catching up with old friends!
So many of them had gotten engaged or married over the past few years.
I jokingly asked Kevin on the drive home when he was going to get around to asking me to marry him, LOL.
We had that kind of relationship with each other.
He glanced over at me and joked back that he didn’t know why the man was always supposed to ask the woman to marry him in this day and age.
I sat there for a moment thinking.
And then I said, “You’re right. Will you marry me, Kevin?”
He Said Yes!
He laughed and said that yes, of course, he would.
We called our parents when we got home (there weren’t cell phones then!).
And then we quickly set a wedding date: May 6, 1995.
We’ve been together since July of 1992, and married since May 1995.
Over those years we’ve moved three times, raised three kids, and enjoyed the ups and downs of life together.
Thanks to Covid, we got to celebrate our 25th wedding anniversary at home and decided to have some fun with it!
It didn’t zip all the way up, but the dress still mostly fit!
Love is a Choice
Over over 30 years together, the one thing I’ve learned is that love is more than just a feeling.
Love is a verb.
Love is a choice.
Each day presents an opportunity to choose how we’ll treat our spouse.
There’ll be days when we disagree.
And days when we drive each other nuts.
There’ll be days when we aren’t looking or feeling our best.
And there will be days when we’ve lost those giddy feelings when a relationship is brand new.
Of course, there’ll also be lots of days when our hearts are full because of each other!
But every single day offers a choice for how we’ll react.
I chose this man to love, and marry, and spend my life with back in July 1992.
And I continue to choose him, our love, and our life together even on the days when it may be a challenge.
I’ve learned that making it through the harder times in life together, as a team, makes those good times together that much sweeter.
And even this many years later there are still so many times when I see him that those butterflies start fluttering around again in my belly!
So here’s to choosing love, and each other, for the rest of our years. ❤
I’d love to hear your love story! Share it with me in an email or in a comment below.
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