How We Met

There are things about Brendan’s and my relationship that I often point to as proof that we were just meant to be. One of those is the story of how we met. For two people who totally work together now, our backgrounds couldn’t be much more different, and our meeting couldn’t be much more random.

Early in the relationship

Brendan and I grew up worlds apart – I am a Midwestern girl who was raised in Minnesota, where most of my family still lives. He is a true New Englander, coming from a small town in central Massachusetts and rarely leaving the Northeast during his childhood. Weirdly, out of the five or so places he actually vacationed to in his entire life, Brendan actually visited the suburban town where I grew up – Eden Prairie, MN – once in the ‘90s. Turns out, Eden Prairie is the home of the writers of Mystery Science Theater 3000 (MST3K), and as a card-carrying geek, Brendan and his friends took a pilgrimage to Eden Prairie during their trip to a MST3K convention. Of course, we were years from knowing each other then, but the fact that he’d actually been to my (totally random) hometown before is totally strange!

MST3K

Even stranger was the way we met. After growing up near Minneapolis, I headed off to college at Boston College. It was in the winter of my sophomore year that Brendan and I met. It was the weekend, and I was out in the city for the day. I happened to be in Coolidge Corner, one of the cuter little shopping areas in Boston, and I headed into a Starbucks to grab a latte. Little did I know, that latte would change my life.

 

Coolidge Corner, the scene of our first meeting

Brendan was 6 years out of college (yes, we have 8 years between us), and he was working near Boston at the time. He had come into town to go shopping, and also stopped in at the Starbucks. This is particularly odd because he doesn’t drink coffee very often – but we just happened to be in the same place at the same time.

Now, neither of us is usually all that talkative with strangers, but it was a busy day in Boston, and the tiny little coffee shop was packed. We ended up sitting at the same table, and somehow struck up a conversation. I don’t really remember what we talked about that day – probably nothing too exciting – but we could definitely both feel the chemistry. We got in touch with each other afterward, and the rest is history!

Commencement ball at the end of college - hard to believe it was years ago!

It’s been over nine years since that day, and we’ve been growing together ever since. I left for graduate school in Pennsylvania, leaving Brendan behind, but we made the long-distance relationship thing work and found our way back to each other. Now we are finally together, and I’m so excited to be building our lives together.

In one of our favorite vacation spots - more on this later! 

I’ll talk more about the proposal in another post – but there you have it, the totally random story of how two strangers met and fell in love.