My husband and I met on Tinder in October of 2014 when he was driving cross-country. Yeah it still sounds a little crazy to me, too. At the time I was working at a makeup counter and living at home in Oklahoma and really not having the best luck dating. I wasn’t meeting single straight guys at the counter nor after work when I’d go out with friends. A girl at another counter suggested I try Tinder and I did for a while and quit only to come back and start talking to Cory.
I messaged him first because he had a great smile and from pictures looked like he liked some of the same things I did. We got into a conversation right off and when he went to ask me to dinner I was startled-he said he would be in town, as in wasn’t in town already. Asking him to explain turned into a lengthy answer. He was living in Dallas when he got a job in Portland, OR. With some time before starting the new job and not knowing when next he would be able to visit his family in Iowa where he is from, he decided to stay with them for a while. His job was starting soon so he was driving to Dallas to pack up his belonging to move to his new home in Portland ( which he had to find and rent yet) to start his job there. Would I go to dinner with him? I declined. Some guy on a dating service looking to meet up for a night? That wasn’t what I was looking for. (As I know now he was hoping for conversation and food recommendations from a local instead of whatever fast food was nearest the motel, trying to make more fun out of an otherwise solitary 2,000 mile drive)Even as I turned him down he kept messaging me over the next couple of days. We were keeping up a good conversation so when he asked when I got off work that night and if I would meet him for dinner I said yes. I figured dinner wouldn’t hurt. He was driving back through in a U-Haul headed to Portland. Of course now I have long realized Oklahoma City isn’t on the way to Portland from Dallas, he’d gone out of his way, but at the time I didn’t think about it.
Dinner was a great time when it was set to be a disaster. There was a flash flood going on and the restaurant I picked was in the middle of a street fair that was largely driven indoors by the rain so it had an unexpected two hour wait. The next restaurant we tried had the same story so we left a number to get a text when we could come back and went in to an art gallery to look around inside and out of the rain. Among the art there was a metal sculpture on the wall of a flock of birds. It was fairly simple in execution but was clean and the subject clear. Cory wasn’t impressed with it or its price tag and remarked how “Someone could make that!” To which I responded “Someone did!” Later he said that was when he knew I was the one for him.
It kept down-pouring and was starting to come in to the gallery through the door so we decided to run across the street to my favorite pub and try to grab a bite. Cory lent me his coat to cover my head as we ran across the flooded street. Inside there was actually room and we were seated. We had dinner, it was fantastic ( per usual for this place) and had a great conversation. He was so much fun that I really wasn’t thinking about his cross-country move. We had our first kiss in the rain and I was kind of spinning. I liked this guy. This was NEVER going to turn into anything. He was moving so far away!
Cory called me each day on his trip, texting me, he even stopped and recorded a song we had both said we liked when we’d met and sent it to me. When he was in Portland we Skyped each night for a bit and after about a week he had to go to Israel for a work trip. I thought for sure this was where we would lose communication with his being in a totally different time zone and being focused on work. Instead we still Skyped each night and he sent me flowers to work! My coworkers were all asking who the guy was and any explanation left them thinking I was crazy. He lived in Oregon, this wasn’t going to work. Cory ended up rerouting his flight home to stop in Oklahoma City for Halloween weekend where he briefly met my parents and then went to a friend’s Halloween party. Still having the best time he was talking about how to fly me out to see him and how we would work this out. Eventually the talk turned to me moving there and he said he loved me. Our getting together was fast but we just knew it was right when we met. Thanksgiving he flew down and helped me load up a U-Haul and we left for Portland. We got married in May a year and a half later with a small ceremony on the beach. There were fifteen of us there in total, Cory’s sisters were going to sing our song (Swept Away by the Avett Brothers-the song he recorded for me right after we’d met) when Cory stepped in and took over as a surprise. Our friend Andy officiated and his wife, our friend Cecilia, made the cake. We had cake in the forest right where it opens to beach before going out to dinner at our favorite brewery. It’s been six years now, with four of them married as of last May. There isn’t a day that I regret this decision so many called me crazy for. Sometimes you truly just know.
Happy Valentine’s Day.
