Last year, Todd and I passed 10 years as a couple, and this week we are celebrating 9 years of marriage! To commemorate the occasion, I thought I’d share the story of how we met, from both of our perspectives + some Q&A about our love story.
LINDSAY’S POV (which is longer than I wanted, because I have to mention things Todd lies about later)
I moved into my apartment early my sophomore year of college, so I could get settled in before the semester started, and get a bigger room. I was back in Utah sooner than most people I knew, so I spent that week watching films on Amazon, and learning how to do makeup better through Youtube tutorials.
A few days after my friends/flatmates (from the previous year) moved in, there was a knock on our door that no one else got to, so I answered.
The friendly guy at the door invited myself, and anyone else in my apartment to play poker. He said it was even okay for me to come in my pajamas. I informed him they were ‘yoga pants’, and left to go back to my movie in my room, since my flatmates were all crowding in to see what the invite was for. I definitely found the invitation off-putting, as a staunchly anti-poker person then (I even convinced my dad to stop watching it, or playing a poker phone game, because I was so against it). I didn’t know it at the time, and wouldn’t for at least a year, but that guy was Todd.
The next time I remember seeing Todd was when he came over to hang out and chat with my flatmates. He had been friends with the girls in my apartment the year before (all but one had moved out), and was just ‘used to’ hanging out there. I was making myself a personal pizza, and not really engaging in the conversation. But I do recall joining in when it turned to how hard it can be to learn lots of new people’s names, and I said I was t e r r i b l e at remembering names. Todd asked if I remembered what his name was. My timer literally went off that second, I got my pizza out of the oven, and went back to my room, having elegantly avoided responding, because I definitely did not remember ~that guy’s~ name.
A few weeks later, during the first football home game of the season, all of my flatmates were at the stadium. I got a knock at the door, and it was Todd. He said everyone was either at the game or watching it, but he wasn’t interested in that. I wasn’t either, so he asked if I’d like to hang out. He came in, and we spent a few hours just talking.
I had never, ever, in my entire life, had one conversation with a peer, and immediately wanted—like genuinely wanted—to be their friend. Until Todd. He was so easy to talk to, and he was funny, and we had some things in common. I’d told so many people enjoyed watching Youtube videos, but he was the only person who could give me a channel he enjoyed—the VlogBrothers—and it was one of my favourites to boot!
A few weeks after the game, he tried inviting my whole apartment out to get soft serve at Macey’s, but I was the only one available. While we were there, I mentioned how lame it was that the light pollution made it almost impossible to see stars here, and he told me he knew a place where you could see them better, so off we went up the canyon. It wasn’t until we got out that I realized I had only known him for a couple of weeks, and no one knew where I was, and I didn’t even know where we were (we were at Bridalveil Falls). So I was a little on guard.
Having never been on the Bridalveil path before, and hearing the rushing water, I kept accidentally bumping into Todd, because it was so dark, and I was worried about walking off the path. I hoped he wouldn’t think I was trying to hold his hand. My worries about being up there were soon abated, because Todd spent most of the time talking about dwarves and elves, in a surprising, and fun conversation. Once we were back at our apartment building, he had me put my number in his phone, and I just put in “Lindsay” for some reason—no last name.
Though our relationship was just as friends for the first 6 months of knowing each other, it wasn’t entirely platonic. Todd was pretty up front that he liked me. He just never did much about it. Shortly after our Bridalveil outing, he came over for a movie when it was just me staying home, and sat smack in the middle of the couch. He held my hand, and then literally all of my roommates, and several friends ended up coming in, and seeing it (and I was definitely not even sure how I felt about the hand-holding in the first place). Then, he convinced me to download Warcraft 3—and I got a reputation for being the only girl around willing to play it. Later on in the evening on the hand-holding day, he cuddled up to me, and I could tell her wanted to kiss, too, which I did not acquiesce to, as it felt very weird and fast. But I did accept massages, as I was hella tense in those days (now I just make Todd pay for me to see a chiropractor regularly). From there, we frequently swapped massages, and cuddled. I would have dated him, if he’d asked, but he didn’t. I ended up dating someone else that semester instead, which was okay in the end, because we had more time to get to know each other outside of a romantic relationship.
Over that semester, I had such a great time any time we hung out, and he came to be my best friend.
TODD’S POV (the first draft of which was literally so full of lies, I made him correct several. But it’s still untruthful in a way that makes him laugh wickedly)
I don’t exactly remember which was the first time I actually talked to Lindsay anymore. I was pretty sure it was this one time, but she assures me it was another, so now I just have no idea.
Regardless, in my mind, the first memory I have of Lindsay was invading her apartment to introduce myself to the new people who lived there. This was mostly out of habit, as I had known the apartment’s previous inhabitants (though they all moved out after the summer), but also a different friend of mine had moved in there and told me she had a cute roommate. I decided to investigate.
It was on a Sunday after we had all returned from church (or in my case, perhaps I had returned from pretending to go to church), and Lindsay was done up in a cute way. I remember feeling smitten with her face, and particularly her eyes, and from that moment I put her toward the top of my “important people I need to know more about” list. She almost immediately left the room after I arrived and hid away somewhere with her weird cobbled together pizza like kind of thing (olive oil with a splattering of cheese on a pre-made “crust.” Can you even imagine). Probably put on pajamas. She said maybe 5 words to me that day, but it was enough for the time.
Another time that may have been the actual first time I talked to her was when a friend and I invited her to come to a casual poker night (we were betting with Skittles), and she refused. She basically gave us the once over, and we could tell from her face that she thought we were vile sinners. She retreated into her apartment (probably to hide in PJs and eat “pizza”), and I said “You don’t have to change! You can come in your pajamas!” She slammed the door on us.
The first time I got a real chance to talk with Lindsay was during the 2011 Homecoming football game. Everyone had gone to the game or to a game watching activity, and that all sounded super boring to me, so I was looking for something better to do. Once again, out of habit, I dropped by Lindsay’s apartment and luckily for me she was there on the couch watching something on her MacBook. I asked her what she was watching and she said YouTube, or something like that. Having just recently become all knowing about 2011 YouTubing myself, I asked her if she knew about the vlogbrothers. She said she did and I gave her a Nerdfighter salute.
From that point on she was obsessed with me. We spent the next few hours talking and breaking down barriers. A few days later we watched a film together and she right next to me and held my hand. We went out on a walk to some nearby waterfall in the hills at night. It’s a fairly popular destination, but it was very dark, and she didn’t know me THAT well. Regardless, she kept bumping into me and trying grab my hand.
Yeah. I knew she wanted all this, but she had wait until my wounded heart was ready to love again, so I didn’t lead her on… Very much. After a bunch more fun and such we started dating.
Lindsay may have a slightly different version of these events, but they’re not as fun, so mine are right.
Let’s answer 9 questions about our love story to celebrate each year that we’ve been married!
1. What about my personality first attracted me to you?
L: That you were really easy to talk to. And you were very funny, and interesting.
T: You liked to talk to me, and when we talked, you didn’t act annoyed, or like you didn’t understand what I was saying.
2. What was the physical feature that most attracted you to me?
L: I’m a shoulder gal, and you had the broadest shoulders I’d seen (+ very good posture).
T: Your eyes, ’cause they’re cute.
3. When we started dating, did you have any thoughts or ideas about how you thought it might go?
L: I distinctly remember thinking that this was either going to just run it’s course over 1-3 months, and end awkwardly, likely fizzling out our friendship; or it would just be it.
T: I thought it would go well.[…] Because you’re obsessed me.
4. Do you have any cute memories from before we dated, or from early on?
L: So, I mostly only remember weird things, but I do remember us standing together in the hall, and you teasing, “You LiKe me”, so I just said, “Yeah, I do”, and you were so surprised? But this was after at least a few weeks of being cuddle buddies, so your surprise was endearing (also a bit odd).
T: I remember when your parents came out, and we did some weird thing, and they were like, “You’re the same kind of weird!”, and I thought ‘we’re just being friends, but maybe if you think we’re weird, you’re the weird ones’.
5. Do you have any sweet or romantic memories from that time?
L: I recall you coming over to hang out one Sunday afternoon. I was doing homework on the couch, and you were on the floor in front of me, and you held my hand a bit, and you kissed it a few times, before sort of dozing off. I thought that was very sweet.
T: We used to hug a lot, and go on a lot of walks, and we just did everything together. We were mutually each other’s puppies. We were like two puppies holding the same stick.
6. When did you know/what made you decide our relationship would be more serious?
L: I said that I knew straight away it would likely be serious, but when you started talking about things we could do many months in the future, or even a year or two down the road, I could tell you were on the same page, so that was really comforting + nice to know, without it taking much trouble to find out.
T: It was serious once we started dating.
7. When did you know they were ~the one~?
L: When we’d been dating around 6 months, and you had to pick me up from my first day of my first college job, because I was so ill I was almost passing out. And then you stayed with me for hours until I felt better. I worried that this was imposing a bit, or just too much, but you said that when you thought about our future, this was how you saw things. Obviously meaning, like, taking care of each other, and being there for one another. But I was just like, “Wow, really?” and I just knew that if you were happy together during a time like this, you were just my person.
T: Choosing to date was you seriously was me going down that path, giving it a real college try.
8. What was your favorite memory from our wedding day?
L: I think just sitting together before the ceremony. We were ready, we were there, we got some time to just pause and be together. And it just felt right and natural.
T: Probably the dress reveal, because it was just us, and we weren’t in the throes of it yet, and I wasn’t tired yet either.
9. What do you think makes our marriage work so well?
L: Being best friends + always communicating. Best friends because: even if life is really not great at the moment; or if we’re not totally jiving; or no one’s feeling particularly romantic, we just like to hang out and support each other. Just on that very deep friendship level. Communication because: no one is left guessing, and we can say what we need, if something hurt our feelings, or needs to be adjusted. And I think we’re both very receptive to that.
T: I think the thing that makes our marriage work well is the fact that we want it to work well. When we have a problem, we would rather fix it for our marriage, than hang onto the problem just to hang onto it.
