How I Met Your Father — Once Upon a Blind Date is a part of a series celebrating love and marriage by telling the stories of some of our Nashville Moms Blog contributors and how they met their partners. Enjoy more of these sweet stories here!
There was this time when my social butterfly mom met and befriended a lady from another state with whom she shared many interests. Like all new friends, they vowed to get together again, so Mom soon planned her 5-hour road trip. But when trip time came, recent surgery prohibited Mom from driving. She invited me to take her and my younger sister on the excursion. I was 25, single, and bored—so a weekend out of town was a welcome change of scenery.
The funny thing about Mom’s friendship was that it was still too new for her to know how manipulating her friend was! A few days before the trip, Mom’s friend called to share her plan . . . (and being guests, we didn’t protest. I was trapped into going on a blind date!) On Saturday night, this friend’s many church friends would come over for a covered dish supper and then have a hymn sing (she and Mom are both church musicians). While the “adults” were singing, we “youngsters” would go bowling. She arranged for David, a young man she knew through church friends, to come meet me. We would then go bowling with her son and my sister. Her “party planning” even included the aforementioned blind date for David to take me on a drive around town that afternoon.
The evening went so well that we continued the “date” elsewhere (sans the teenagers). This was pre-9/11, when wandering airports was allowed. David and I both enjoy traveling, and the large airport nearby was a great place to talk and get better acquainted.
Our lives during the next months consisted of handwritten letters and long-distance calls. In fact, David and I were soon engaged and were married exactly six months later. Our 36th anniversary is this summer, and we are living happily ever after!