How Did You Meet Your LOYL

Hi,

Well I am a dumb kopf. I tacked my story on the end of his story. I wish I could move it to here. I guess that would not do. It would need to be re-written to make sense away from his story.

Enjoy,

Jim

No worries, Jim. Your story is great where it is. :thumb: But if you'd rather have it here, just ask and any one of the Mods or Admins can move it for you, and then you can edit it as you see fit. ;)

OK, I'll start the ball rolling in this thread.

I've had two LOMLs, and love them both to this day. (In different ways, of course...and they both get along together well. Bonus.) Anyway, the first one didn't work out for reasons beyond our control, so years later I was a lonely single guy living in the big city. There were a number of companies in the office building where I worked, and I had noticed that a cute girl from the law firm on the 8th floor left to go home every day at 4:00. So of course I started timing my cigarette breaks to coincide with that schedule, and most days I just happened to be in a position to say hi as she walked by on the way to the parking structure. Unlike most nice-looking girls, she didn't roll her eyes, look away or run off when I spoke to her. :rolleyes: :p She was surely out of my league, though.

I knew another girl who worked in the same office, and eventually she told me that I'd probably have a good chance of getting a "yes" if I asked the cute girl out. So I did, and she did, and we went to lunch. At lunch, she got a kick out of the waitress walking up from behind me to take our order while saying "What can I get you ladies?", then doing the embarrassed foot in mouth dance when she saw I was not a lady, but instead an unattractive man. :rolleyes: Nonetheless, she explained that she was just coming out of a long relationship that had ended up badly, and was not looking for anyone. Plus, she didn't like long hair on guys, didn't drink (I did...quite a bit) and smokers were definitely gross. Three strikes, baby.

Choosing to ignore that, I asked her out again a few weeks later to go on an all-day ocean fishing trip with several friends from the office. She accepted, but we all missed the fishing boat by about a minute, so we opted to go spend the day on Catalina Island instead. On the boat ride over, she grabbed ahold of my hand and seldom let go until we said goodbye at the end of the day. After that day in 1995, my life hasn't been the same. It took us another 10 years to get the logistics worked out and actually get married, but we've been a team through thick and thin for over 15 years. We're opposites in countless ways, but for some odd reason we're a good fit. Fortunately, she had the two qualities I was looking for in a woman: Desperation and bad eyesight. :thumb: :p
 
April 1971. I was taking my best friend out to dinner on his 21st birthday. We went to a place called the Meadows in Framingham Mass. They had a nice restaurant plus a real nice live band and dance floor. We were seated next to a group of 6 or 7 girls who were celebrating the 21st birthday of one of them. As soon as we were seated one of the girls caught my eye. I knew immediately that we were going to spend the rest of our lives together. I totally ignored my friend.
She was the oldest of 9 kids in a 1st generation Italian family. I came from an old New England family who had a relative that came over on the Mayflower. Talk about culture shock.
I was totally smitten. I asked her to marry me in July and we got married in November. In 1973 we had the first of 6 children.
 
I was on layoff from my employer and was going to join a photography expedition to Mt. McKinley Alaska for a month when I go a report back to work notice, a month in advance, which very disappointingly fell in the middle of the planned trip.

In my angst I bought a car and decided to go spend a couple of weeks shooting photos in Michigan's U.P. and Canada. I stopped in on a friend in the U.P. and found him on a month long drunk. His neighbor kindly put me up for a few nights while I plied the camera locally. My future wife stopped by the neighbors to visit his daughter. When I found out she was working in Copper Harbor Michigan, I decided to make a trip out there and asked her out. Our first date was to the town dump to see and photograph the bears. (yes, I took my wife to the dump on our first date:D)

Our second date was an attempt to reach the point of Michigan's Kewenaw Peninsula. I managed to get the car stuck in a mud hole and while trying to cut a few logs with a machete to fill the mud hole I hacked into a ground hornet nest. I came running and hollering out of the woods waving the machete around trying to whack the hornets away and my poor wife -to-be thought she might have went out with a serial killer and took off running. After about 100 yards she heard me hollering hornets and realized I hadn't lost my marbles.

A week earlier in the trip I had been shooting Canyon falls and had stepped down on a ledge to get a better vantage point. The ledge broke off the cliff and I fell off but managed to twist and slammed the camera in my hand onto the cliff top arresting a real bad consequence. I was sick to look at the camera thinking my trip was trashed. After working on it for a few minuets I got it working and all seemed O.K.
However after our Kewenaw/ hornet escapade I decided to move on with life and forget about the young lass. I left to continue my planned trip and stopped that night to shoot the moon coming up just over a conifer tree line. The next day the camera wouldn't work. After calling around the U.P. trying to find a camera repair shop I only managed to find one place back In Houghton, Michigan, where the guy said he had the tools but didn't do the work any more. I went back to Houghton and used his tools to tear the camera down and found the mirror lock up lever was bent. When I was finishing up in walked Karen and her mom. Karen introduced me as the guy who took her to the dump and got her stung by hornets. :rofl: In an effort to salvage some self respect I took them out to lunch. Her mom invited me back to the family farm for dinner and to meet the rest of the family.

I did plan on leaving the next morning for Canada. However her brother woke me at 6:00 a.m. and asked if I would work harvesting potatoes because a worker didn't show up for work. 2 weeks later I reported back to work all rested up, (not) and an experienced potato harvester.

We dated by phone and letter for a few years while Karen finished up her nursing degree and were married on April 5th, 1986. She's a pretty, tough, farm girl, and still puts up with me. :wave:

The photos I shot of the moon came out double exposed with 2 moons instead of one. One photo was used for an album cover for a band based in Boston Ma. So the photo trip wasn't a total wash. And I did find a fine woman. :D:thumb:
 
Lori and I met one fall weekend in Oct 1978, we were each asked by different teachers to work as stage hands for the all-state Band , Choir and Orchestra competition which our school was hosting. She sang, I played the saxaphone. We wound up spending long hours at school that weekend, waiting for our next change-over, kids being kids. I walked her home twice that weekend, turns out we lived just a mile apart, over the course of the next 4 years I walked, rode and finally drove that mile countless times. We split up after I went away to college, but never really were 'finished'. She got married somewhere in the middle years, I became a working nomad, I traveled all over the USA as a photographer and trucker. Every so often I'd settle down again in NY, and we'd usually bump into each . Eventually she and her ex were finis, and about that time I moved back to the area. I worked in Syracuse, lived north of Utica (about an hour away). She lived in Lakeport, which was 'on my way' home... so I'd stop and visit... pretty soon it was 'too late to drive all the way home...'

I'm a coffee drinker, and at the time I was sharing my best friend & his wife's house. They are Not coffee drinkers at all, so the coffee maker in their crowded kitchen was solely my responsibility. One day Brenda turns to Stu and asks 'is Ned still living here? (I had by this time been spending a Lot of time with Lori and our three boys) Stu replied 'I think so, his coffee maker is still here!' Soon after that I moved the rest of my clothes and gear out to Lakeport.

Lori and I got engaged on the Winter's Solstice of 1999, and married in July 2006 as some of you might recall.
 
I think I've told story before and I certainly do not mind telling it again.

I moved to Tokyo Japan on August 16th 1990, I had planned to stay six months and study Aikido (a martial art) at the world headquarters dojo, then return home to Canada and carry on with my life.

I ended up getting an aparto about an 8 minute stumble from the dojo, which was good as I did the 6:30 AM class six days a week, also the 8:00 AM and usually the 3:00 PM class too. The aparto I lived in was a Yo-jo-han which means 4 1/2 mats, about 9' square with a small closet and a very small kitchen that was in the entrance, how small, well the entrance was about 2' square and the sink was abut 18" square with just enough room on one side for a hot plate. The toilet was down the hall, an old style squat type and there was no shower or bath. Where this building stood is right next to the building we live in now.

Much to my surprise most of the Aikido guys drink a LOT of booze, and being a junior member I was often tasked to go get the beer from the liquor shop. I noticed that the daughter of the liquor shop (my future wife) was very cute, but as I spoke little or no Japanese what chance did I have?

One day while in the L-shop I overheard her talking to this Australian gal in just about perfect English... :thumb:

I was very busy, working two jobs and going to Aikido whenever I was not working or sleeping, and she too was very busy, but one day I got a letter from the city addressed to me, all in Japanese so I took it to her and asked for some help, she helped me with the letter, some tax thing I recall.
Well the building I was living in was going to be torn down and rebuilt, we all had to find new places to live, the old aparto was full of foreign Aikido people. I found a place quite far from the dojo, I'd have to catch the 5AM train to make the 6:30AM class:eek: The funny thing is my future wife actually helped me move out of the neighbourhood and away from her :doh:We were just friends, not dating. I lived at the new place for about six months, and it was killing me those early mornings, so I moved back closer to the dojo, but not near the L-shop. I had not seen Emiko for maybe six months. One day on the way home from work, I stopped at a 7-11 to buy some bread, and they were sold out, so I went out of my way to another 7-11 that I usually do not go to and bought my bread, when I came out of the store, there stopped at the light was Emiko and a mutual Aikido friend in the L-shop's little truck, the mutual friend was moving and Emiko being the ever helpful person was helping, I said "Hi" and offered to lend the two girls a hand. The aparto the mutual friend was moving into was the aparto that I have since renovated and documented right here on this site.
After the moving was done, I asked for Emiko's number and she gave it to me :eek: Soon after that, the mutual friend had a house warming and I went and so did Emiko, not long after that we started dating, then got married, about a year later, Erika our first daughter was born.

We just celebrated 17 years, so we must be doing something right!

There you go, my story in a nutshell! :wave:
 
I had just moved to Lawrence, KS for my junior year of college and had become fast friends with a couple of guys that were our neighbors. The second week of classes a couple of the neighbor guy's friends stopped by to watch a football game on TV. I noticed her as she first arrived, but I had a paper I needed to write for a class (16th century british history:doh:) She asked me to stick around and have a few beers, Being a dedicated student :rolleyes: I declined and went to my house to work on the paper. I know, what was I thinking, a girl asking me to drink beer with her!! About 20 minutes later I came to my senses and was back next door. She asked how I got the paper done so fast and I said I had decided to drop the class, didn't need to know anything about the 16th century anyway. That was in August of 1992...it took us 7 short years for us to finally get married. 4 years after that, I finally got my degree, I said I was a dedicated student right?:eek:

I do know for sure I did make the right descion to drop that class. :D
 
I had noticed this beautiful girl at a football game in a neighboring city, and she was sitting with a guy I went to school with....turns out they were dating. Several months later I pulled into her driveway with my friend and said "Rod, you ever see the girl who lives here?...she is gorgeous" Rod says, yeah that's my sister Becky's friend Judy.....and she just broke up with Danny.

Cool! :thumb: .....but who am I kidding, I am a painfully shy guy and there is no way this beautiful girl would ever go out with a farm boy even if I had the courage to ask her out.

Somehow, some reason, something made me ask her out....she said No!:doh: I must have been a glutton for punishment cause I kept asking her out every week.....she kept saying No. :doh: at least 10 times I asked with the same results. I was umpiring a little league ball game, she was in her car as a spectator, I thought when I call the last out I am going to go over and ask her out one more time......so on the last out I make a beeline for her and as I just about get there she rolls up her car window and leaves. Okay fine!....I am done asking her out and tired of rejection.

A week later my friend Rod and I are involved in a car wreck and I find out that when Judy heard about it from Rod's sister Becky, she wanted to know if I was OK. :thumb: she at least acknowledges my existence.

Now I need a new/different car and I am test driving a 71 Mustang ( yeah I know not a chebbie) and who do I see riding in her car...Judy! Okay I think to myself, ask her out one more time cause she did ask how you were after the accident. I pull up alongside her at the next light and ask her if she'd like to go for a ride....she says Yes...Yes? that word is in her vocabulary, and hops in. I then ask her if she'd like to go horseback riding on our farm....she says Yes....wow twice in the same day.

And that was the beginning of our 32 years together. She tells me that she also noticed me at that football game and thought I was the most handsome guy she had ever saw, I asked her why she told me no so many times if she really wanted to go out with me.....turns out her friend Becky had told her I was a older guy who was just looking for a wife. :rofl: and was scared of me.
 
I shared a rental house with two other guys. One day we decided to have a party and put out the word. House was packed, lotsa booze and noise and people we didn't know.
At one point I spotted a girl wearing a cute headband. She didn't fit the description of the typical party girl I was usually interested in.
One look at her, and I was smitten.
That was 47 years ago.
 
I spent a week at the beach with my "group" from high school my Jr year (1974). When we returned, one of the girls hosted an after beach trip party. When I arrived, I noticed her younger sister and ended up spending most of the evening talking with her.
She had a steady boyfriend at the time, but (I found out later) she broke up that night.
I returned the next day on my dad's motorcycle to pick up something I left there (really, I forgot it :D)
We dated for 5 years before getting married and raising 2 kids.:thumb:
We have a lot in common, but our differences complement each other, and I feel lucky to have found my soul mate so soon in life.
 
I went to country dance lesson for something to. They had all the guys on one side of dance floor and the lady's on the other and then said to pick a partner.
There were 4 lady's left and I grabbed one. That was March 20th 1988 at 6:00 pm we got married 2 years later on March 20th at 6:00 pm
 
It was sort of fast. 6 months to the day we were married. I was sitting in my parents home and this girl walked in with my sister and they were in the kitchen talking and I heard her talking about a bunny costume and being a guy my ears perk up. Well they left and she walked right past me. then my sister left and I asked her to get her phone number. So when she asked her out side the girl said who wants it and sis said the guy sitting on the sofa , well she did not even see me on the sofa. Next time I saw her was at an outdoor concert and I introduced my self and we we out on a date. I took her for crabs down on the shore because you can learn a lot about someone eating crabs LOL
 
My wife was hired as a word processor at the place I worked as maintenance man. I was installing a keyboard tray under her desk the first time we met.

I later had some signs I needed made and asked if she type them up for me. A lunch later I asked her out for the following Saturday. She couldn't go out as she had her kids that weekend, but asked if I'd like to stop over and she and the kids would bake some cookies. I agreed and stopped over Saturday evening. Her son was on the couch ignoring me and her daughter was taking a bath. I sat down as she went off to the kitchen. About 2 minutes later, a little naked 4 year old girl comes out of the bathroom and crawls up and sits on my lap (I'm glad she got out of this phase, but still tease her about it to this day). Her son is over on the couch rolling in laughter, so she comes in and apologizes taking her back to get her dressed. We spent the evening watching Bevis and Butthead on MTV after the kids were put in bed. We dated for 3 years and have been married for 13. Oh, and the cookies sealed the deal for me...best I've ever had. ;)
 
after six years in the Navy and another few months sailing around the South Pacific I was out of action and needed to get back into circulation. The church my parent went to had a young adult group that did social things together. I help organize a ski trip to the mountains during the thanksgiving weekend and as the organizer I planned to go up Thanksgiving evening to get the keys to a large lodge that we rented for the weekend. I went out to get chains for my car and when I returned to pick up my suit case there was a call from a gal who wanted to know if she could ride up with me. That was 39 years ago last month. On Christmas eve 39 years ago I asked her to marry me and we were wed the following easter season on April 14th.
 
She was the girl next door. Actually about 3 blocks away. The school we went to had 1st and 2nd grade in one room and 3rd and 4th in the other. She was in 2nd grade and I was 4th grade. We walked to school together and grew up together. Dated a few times in high school and started having serious feelings for each other in her Senior year in high school. We married in June of 1968, I was in the Army and headed for Vietnam the following January. We've been married for 42 years now. I buy the tools and the wood and she "suggests" what I should build. :rofl: Pretty sweet deal IMHO. :thumb:
 
Ive read all these stories, and its pretty cool to see how people find each other. There was only one thing that bothered me.
Stu-how the hec did you bath if you had an apt with now bath or shower, even down the hall?
Amazing you ever got a date.(just joshing,)
 
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