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Celebrating Love: Part I

By Angelia Phillips

We all love to hear a good romantic story. Nothing warms our hearts like hearing about how two people met and fell in love. Or how the simple words "will you marry me?" make the heart flip-flop.

With Valentine's Day, roses and chocolates marking February, we'd like to celebrate love and relationships. Here are wonderful stories of how some of our Layover couples met.

• My now husband and I had been talking about getting married at a justice of the peace since this was the second wedding for both of us and we have older children. One day, I was at work and my now husband came in from a trip. He came walking into the office and said, "Let's go get married." We left and got married on my lunch break 10 years ago. My boss was surprised and gave me eight hours pay anyway for the day.

  We also had a mini wedding reception at McDonalds afterwards, just hubby and me. It was the best double cheese burger I've ever had.

  - Vickie and Joel

• We actually met online while I was on maternity leave, LOL. We had talked online a year earlier, but when it came time to meet, he chickened out because he thought I was too pretty and that I wouldn't like him. While online one morning, while my new baby was asleep, we started talking and realized that we had talked before. This time, he came to my parent's house to meet me and my little girl. We fell in love instantly and within a few months we moved in together. Then on Christmas Eve, in front of my parents and my daughter, he proposed. My parents knew about it because he had asked them for my hand in marriage. I started opening the only present with a bow on it, which I didn't notice at the time, and my parents got their cameras out. I figured they should start taking some pictures. I opened the present (from my parents) and it was a wedding planner book. I thought it was just a joke from my parents, trying to coax him into it. When I turned to look at him and show him, he was on one knee and just asked, "Well...will you?" I thought he was kidding at first. We have the whole thing on video with our daughter in between us. He has raised Taylor since she was 6 weeks old, and we are now married with two more little girls. It's only been 4 1/2 years since we first met, but I still get that giddy feeling around him. He is still the man of my dreams...flaws and all!

  - Jill

• I met my husband, Jerry, in 1982 while I was a waitress at a restaurant called the Huddle House and he was a truck driver that had just transferred from Ohio. He would stop in a lot since his motel was a short distance away. He was going through a divorce and so was I. We started going out and 9 months later we were married. We have been married over 22 years now and are still best friends and soul mates.

  - Cindy

• I met my trucker, Bill, at a support group for people who had been abused by their spouses or boyfriends/girlfriends. Anyway, we met two years ago and got married August 27, 2005, in Knoxville, Illinois. Bill proposed to me down on one knee (his left knee if I remember correctly) in the bunk of his truck (he was between the two seats, I was sitting on the bunk). He proposed and married me even though he knew that I was dying. That is my story. Note: Debbie has ovarian cancer and young children. Please send up your prayers for this family.

  - Debbie

• I met my hubby online through a Yahoo singles group in Atlanta in March 2002. We knew the same lady friend and she kept telling me to talk to him and telling him to talk to me. (Dating over 35 is a pain - everyone is always trying to fix you up.) Well, he IM'd me several times. I avoided him until one evening he caught me online and struck up a conversation. I told him I'd talk to him as long as he was polite and he was. We talked more and more online and emailed. After about a month, he asked if he could call me. I gave him my cell number and figured if he was a jerk, I would have it disconnected. He had the cutest drawl when he spoke.

  He decided to come for a visit, to get away from work and family. I asked him for references. He gave me his mom, his dad, four coworkers and three friends' phone numbers and addresses. I figured I was on a roll, so I asked for his social security number and his driver's license number. I owned an Assisted Living Home at the time and did a criminal record check on him and verified his job. He checked out A-OK.

  He started calling more often, then several times a day. Somewhere along the way things changed from being friendly to like, "Hello, we may have something going on here." He came to visit for 10 days. He drove from Atlanta to Madison, Wisconsin, in a Jeep Wrangler. He showed up at 2:00 a.m. instead of later that day at 4:00 p.m. I had cleaned the house and did everything but grocery shop (not a thing in the house to eat!). The first thing he said to me standing on my doorstep was, "You're not nearly as ugly as I thought you'd be." LOL! We had sent lots of pictures back and forth. My sons (then 18 and 20) raked him over the coals and decided he was a pretty cool guy. We did 2,500 miles of site seeing in Wisconsin before he returned to Atlanta (this was in early rainy May, in a jeep.)

  Two weeks later I went to Atlanta to visit him and meet his family and friends. I had a ticket to stay a week. I stayed a month. My sons called and told me to come back and pack my stuff. They found new roommates and needed my room. I went back to Wisconsin for two weeks and packed. I moved to Atlanta in July 2002. He looked at me one night sitting on the couch (Aug 2003) and said, "I suppose we should get hitched." (Such a charmer.) He told me I could make all the plans except he would pick the date. He picked New Year's Eve 2003. That way he will always have a date for that holiday :) We were married in an old Mansion that is now a Historical Museum.

  - Heidi

• Well, I don't know if you'll consider this a romance, but David and I met at Estes Express Lines back in Framingham, Massachusetts. I did the billing nights and he was a P&D driver at the time. Then I suffered a house fire, which I lost everything including 2 pets. David is partial to animals vs. people, so he gave me a sympathy card with a check for $25 to help out with buying new clothes and wrote how sorry he was that I lost my two pets on top of the losing everything in the fire. A few months after the fire, my insurance company inventoried my stuff to the tune of $47K and then my "father" promptly kicked me off the property. By this point, David and I had become close. I called him hysterical, because I had no where to go and no money, so he said I could move in "TEMP" until I got back on my feet.

  I started looking for an apartment and at this point, David and I had become involved and he asked if I wanted to stay with him, which I did. We ended up eloping and he sold his '85 Alfa Romeo to purchase me an engagement ring, which he brought into work and got down on one knee in front of the office staff and proposed at Estes Express Lines. He kind of did things backwards, but that's totally David. He is not about doing things "traditionally."

  - Holly

(This is my personal favorite. It shows how romance comes in many ways)

• Snotface and I were both in a training class to take reservations for Greyhound. He was standing against a pillar smoking a cig and being a total jerk. I was trying to be nice and offered his hungry butt part of my lunch, which he declined with a few choice words. I called him a few choice words in return and threw orange Jell-O on him. A week later we were dating and four years later we were married. Somehow I see absolutely no romance in that story. On our first date we went to Village Inn for coffee then he drove me to a grocery store so he could buy toothpaste, toilet paper and shampoo. It was definitely a date to remember. LMAO.

  - Kiz

• Heith and I met because he was friends with my ex in high school. I had met him once when I was like 13 or 14, but I don't remember exactly. Anyway, he had left right out of high school and went to USMC. After three years he got out on a weight control issue because his body fat was less than 5%, but he was still 220 pounds. But that is another story. Point is, he got out and came home. After he was home a month, his ex-wife said, "I'm leaving you and going back to New Hampshire. Oh yeah, I'm pregnant." So he was upset, not to loose her as much as the possibility he'd never see his kid. He started stopping in and seeing old friends. One day he showed up at my door. When I answered it he asked for my ex and they went outside to talk. Never in all the time my ex and I where together had I even been interested in another man. But Heith was so cute and tan. His hair was dirty blond and he was soooo strong. I think I needed a paper towel to wipe the drool off my chin. My ex never even noticed that I actually looked at Heith. We had been together since I was 9. So when I got butterflies in my stomach at the sight of him, I was confused. My ex-husband invited him to come over on the weekends and he spent a lot of time at our house. My ex had a girlfriend and started skipping out on these meetings at the house. So it was just Heith and I. We'd watch movies or play a video game. He loved my cooking and said even if my ex wasn't there, it was worth the drive to get a good home-cooked meal and get away from his parents. He eventually moved into a small hotel room, but kept coming by for a good meal on the weekends. We became good friends, but nothing else. His ex came back and they tried to work it out, and I finally got a backbone and kicked my ex to the curb for cheating.

  When things didn't work out with my parents, my dad moved in with me. A week later while I was at work, Heith showed up at my home and my dad told him he could stay. He hadn't been around in a while because his ex didn't like me and he was making an honest effort at their relationship. Needless to say, I was surprised to see him. But we stayed up all night talking and I told him he should do his best to work things out for his daughter's sake. He said he couldn't do it. So he moved into my house as a friend.

  After awhile we finally did become more than friends, but we went slow and agreed upfront no strings attached as we both had just came out of a bad relationship. We were open and honest with each other and it was an easy relationship to maintain. His ex did her best to split us up and I told her she could have him, but he wasn't going anywhere. So I guess after almost 9 years and three kids, and we now have his daughter too, I'd say he is mine forever. It's funny, I "fell in love" with my ex before I knew what a physical attraction was and thought I'd be happily-ever-after married…NOT…and Heith I fought off a physical attraction for a year or so only to end up falling in love with him over time anyway. Now I can't get rid of him, but I do love him, so I guess I'll just keep him.

  - Deb

More to come next week.