Rob and I met on March 18th, 2000. I remember the date vividly because it was my sister’s 21st birthday.
We’d stopped at one of the local bars to see my best friend, Dori. Her boyfriend at the time was one of Rob’s friends growing up. Rob had just moved back after graduating college and a brief career in banking in Charlotte. It was his first night out on the town after moving back to work in the family car business.
The encounter was brief. Some other girl was sitting on his lap and there were polite handshakes and introductions. Rob remembers that night too. (indented quote)
“The last thing I was hoping for that night was finding someone I was attracted to more than for that night. The moment I saw you, I knew you were someone that I could fall for and it wasn’t just because you looked amazing. There was an energy I felt.”
I had a boyfriend at the time and Rob had just gotten out of a long-term relationship. Neither of us were really looking for each other. Sometimes these things just happen.
We were both in our very early twenties and neither of us were married. By late April we started dating even though I still had a boyfriend. Scandal, I know, but we’re not losing sleep over it twenty years and raising 3 kids later. You shouldn’t either. Most things in life don’t happen like they do in fairy tales. This is real life.
Things took a turn in late May. We were supposed to go away for Memorial Day weekend and I hadn’t heard from Rob all day. This was the pre-cellphone era. I know, hard to imagine. I ended up not waiting for him and went somewhere else with a group of friends. Needless to say, we didn’t talk after that for a while. We would see each other out and around town but we generally ignored each other.
Oh the things you do when you’re young and lacking wisdom. Looking back, it was probably for the best though. Rob had just broken up with his college sweetheart and I still had a boyfriend (it was a long distance relationship and not a good one). Maybe the time apart was good for both of us. Everything happens for a reason.
At the end of that summer, the same friend that introduced us that first night was graduating from beauty school and her parents were throwing a graduation party for her. It was a small get together and Rob and I were both there. Sparks flew again that night. We played beer pong, hung out, and laughed flirtatiously about how I’d run off somewhere a few months before without talking to him first. The rest, as they say, “is history.”
We were inseparable after that. By February of 2001 we took a vacation together and talked about marriage. We were in Key West at the Hog’s Breath Saloon. We were both really young (only 23) but we didn’t care. Maybe we were clueless. Maybe we were naive. But I will tell you this: we were young enough to just say it without overthinking it all.
If you’ve followed the timeline so far, that means we were a couple the year the twin towers fell. September 11, 2001 was one of those moments in history that you never forget. Where you were, who you were with and what you were doing. It was devastating and scary and made you question everything.
Much like the last 12 months living through the Covid pandemic, the impact of Sept. 11th made many people ask themselves what they really wanted out of life. Questions like:
September 11th really put things into perspective for Rob and I both.
We got engaged a couple of weeks later. We don’t really have some grand elaborate proposal story. We went to a party at my parents’ country club and he took me for a walk on the golf course. He got on one knee and said “Iloveyouwillyoumarryme?”
He just blurted it out, nervous and very quickly. It was hardly the over romanticized IG-worthy videos of proposals in today’s world that we seem to be inundated with. The truth is, that’s not really Rob and I anyways. We’re more passionate than romantic and we’re more goofy than serious.
His proposal has kind of become a running joke through the years. Sometimes if we’re bickering or just teasing each other we’ll blurt those words out, and it never fails to make us laugh. So simple and straightforward, yet what else really needed to be said? It answered every question that the year had made us ask ourselves.
With each other.
With each other.
With each other.
And while that’s a lot easier than it sounds, and there was a time in our marriage when I thought I’d changed my answer (I’ll be sharing about this in my next blog post), it’s still the truest thing I know.
