How I Met Your Mother
We met in February of 1996 through our mutual friend Andrea. At the time I was a junior at Saginaw Valley State University and working full time at Concentric Network as a Unix systems administrator. Jami attended the same college, but worked at the Home Depot. She had recently moved to Freeland from Alpena and lived with her parents.
Andrea and I had been good friends since freshman year of high school. She had just started dating someone new, and I was interested in meeting this person. To avoid being a third wheel, Andrea set me up on a blind date with Jami, one of her co-workers from Home Depot.
We all drove to a restaurant which was either Levis or Whitey’s, we are not sure. We had a good time together. So much in fact, after we dropped off Andrea and her friend, Jami and I went to a movie alone together. I am not sure who picked the movie, but it was the Quentin Tarantino film, “From Dusk Till Dawn”. In hindsight, probably not the best first date movie with someone you barely know - vampires, gore, naked ladies, etc. Nothing awkward about two young kids seeing that for the first time together. After the movie, we exchanged email addresses and went our separate ways.
Over the next few months we exchanged emails and talked on and off. I was working third shift and attending classes full time. There was not a lot of free time to spend together. It was casual and fun, but most important it was an easy relationship. Over time, we became great friends. We slowly fell in love and became a couple. We started spending more time with each other, took mini vacations, and made big decisions together.
We both enjoyed college, working, hanging out at the lake, and long thoughtful conversations. We had similar families, upbringings, ambitions, and views on life. Jami was smart, ambitious, confident, strong, opinionated, passionate, kind, and best of all normal. We were not party people. We enjoyed small quiet gatherings with friends. We liked being exclusive - there was no need to date other people.
As she said, “We just liked being together”.
After a few years of dating, we talked about marriage, even looking at rings together. I kept a mental note of the things Jami liked, color, style, diamonds, etc. After a few weeks, I went back to one of the jewelry stores and selected a ring without her knowing. I carried it around in my pocket, waiting for the perfect moment to propose.
On February 28, 1998 Jami and I were in her basement late one night. Sitting on the couch talking. I knew this was the night. I told her I needed a drink and went upstairs. Really, I was just going to get the candle from the dining room. I came back down, turned off the lights, sat on the floor in front of the couch, lit the candle, took the ring out of my pocket, and asked Jami to marry me.
She said YES and we married December 19, 1998.
