12 years ago today…

I met the love of my life, my best friend, my dear husband and Sean and our angel Molly’s proud Daddy Bob!

On Tuesday, September 2, 1996 (also the day after Labor Day, like today), when I was a senior at the University of Illinois at Urbana–Champaign, I went to dinner at Steak `n Shake with one of my roommates and her boyfriend. They had been together for almost a year at that time and seemed so happy and in love. I asked them during our meal how they knew/when they realized they were in love. They told me their “love story” and at the end of it I said that I hoped that I would find what they have someday. Little did I know that one day I would marry the next man I laid eyes on…

After dinner my roommate’s boyfriend suggested that we all go back to his apartment and hang out for a bit, especially because I had been away the previous spring semester studying abroad in London, England. He said that he knew I had never seen his apartment or met his roommates. When we walked in the door Bob was standing in the kitchen of the apartment he shared with my roommate’s boyfriend and two other guys. He was making Kraft Macaroni and Cheese on their stove and was wearing a University of Illinois t-shirt, which I recall thinking was kind of dorky, as I typically only wore such shirts if I was going to a football game. We greeted each other and then my roommate’s boyfriend proceeded to give me a tour of their apartment. I commented that it was cool they had their own pool table there and after Bob ate his Kraft dinner we played a game of pool together.

Next my roommate, her boyfriend, Bob and I played the card game Euchre. I love to play cards and was impressed that Bob seemed to also really enjoy playing. We were partners for the card game and I recall being taken with his smiling “Irish eyes.” He seemed pretty comfortable and open talking with me and I found out later that he usually was fairly quiet around people he doesn’t know well. I was told that for some reason Bob felt at ease with me and thus had talked more. We discussed that night how we both liked 80’s music, as I was heading out to a bar later that evening that hosted weekly “Time Warp Tuesdays.”

We got to know each other as friends in the days and weeks to come, with some help from our roommates (who orchestrated some of our “coincidental” get-togethers). He was also one of the coaches, along with my roommate’s boyfriend, of my sorority’s Intramural Flag Football team that I played on. So I saw him a few times a week at our practices. Then on October 1 we went out on our first date. My sorority had an “impromptu” party that night and I asked Bob to be my date. I guess I wasn’t extremely clear when I invited him that I wanted him to be my date. Apparently I just made it sound more like a party that he was welcome to attend. Bob realized that I wanted him to be my date when my roommate’s boyfriend clarified for him that it wasn’t just a party and that I had truly asked him out. He was excited to make the connection and for our relationship to become more than a friendship.

There is of course a lot more to the story of our relationship that ultimately led to our engagement on March 15, 1999 and our marriage almost eight years ago on September 23, 2000. However tonight I want to celebrate the day that I met my Bobby, my soul mate. I should mention that my roommate and her boyfriend also married after we graduated from college, now have a son close in age to Sean and more recently twin baby girls (who Molly would have been only about 6 months younger than if she had lived) and they remain some of our closest friends.

I love you Bob, always and forever!

I leave you with the lyrics to one of my favorites songs by Steven Curtis Chapman that exemplifies what my life with and marriage to Bob means to me:

I Will Be Here

Tomorrow morning if you wake up
and the sun does not appear
I will be here
If in the dark, we lose sight of love
Hold my hand, and have no fear
‘Cause I will be here

I will be here
When you feel like being quiet
When you need to speak your mind
I will listen
And I will be here
When the laughter turns to cryin‘
Through the winning, losing and trying
We’ll be together
I will be here

Tomorrow morning, if you wake up
And the future is unclear
I will be here
Just as sure as seasons are made for change
Our lifetimes are made for years
So I will be here

I will be here
And you can cry on my shoulder
When the mirror tells us we’re older
I will hold you
And I will be here
To watch you grow in beauty
And tell you all the things you are to me
I will be here

I will be true to the promise I have made
To you and to the One who gave you to me
Tomorrow morning, if you wake up
And the sun does not appear
I will be here

Oh, I will be here.

THEN: The night of Bob and my first date on October 1, 1996