The day I met my husband was the last day I ever envisioned I might meet the person I am now spending my life with. I was a senior in college - a mostly-conscientious senior preparing for a fundraising auction hosted by an accounting fraternity I was the VP Finance of. The auction was the event I was charged with planning from start to finish - my capstone event (geek!) - and I was frazzled and inexperienced at putting something like this together. OK, yes, I was one of THOSE kids in college, involved in every organization at my university I thought might land me a job. The prospect of unemployment terrified me, so I did anything and everything my counselor recommended that would put me in front of potential employers.
The accounting fraternity invited many of the large public accounting firms from Denver who often hired accounting students out of CSU. Of the firms, the one my husband was working for (the same one who had made me an offer to start with them after I graduated) attended. He had graduated from my university only a couple years before I did and was roped into attending the event because of his alumni status.
As many college students do, I was juggling ten things at once, working a shift at my job at the campus bagel shop, running from class to class on a few hours of sleep from the prior night when I made my way to the auction I had planned out so thoroughly (ha). I wore a very typical 1998 outfit that shames me to this day: tight brown pants that really looked more like yoga pants (but I was wearing them to dress up), a ribbed v-neck shirt from the Gap and a chunky pair of brown Mary Janes. Why my husband noticed me, I'll never know. Throughout the night I ran around like a chicken with my head cut off, trying to make sure all went smoothly, schmoozing with the firm representatives, wishing I'd had time for a shower that day. I practically ran right into my husband toward the end of the evening when he asked if I planned on going for drinks with the firm people after the auction was over. I replied without looking up that I didn't think so, thinking of my bed and my 8:00 a.m. class the next day. But then I realized who was talking to me. An attractive, tall guy in a suit. What?? Was I still on campus? Every guy I was used to talking to wore a flannel shirt and had grungy, long hair. This guy was a hotty! And friendly! Quickly, I changed my mind and we agreed - along with many other people - to meet at a nearby bar for a firm-sponsored happy hour for all the potential recruits.
Jason and I talked all night...and he stayed longer than anyone else even though he had an hour drive back to Denver and work early the next morning. He'd graduated a couple years before me and worked at the firm I was slated to work at, though he was contemplating quitting in a few months to travel to Europe for the summer, something I'd just finished doing. He had a beautiful smile and a great sense of humor. He said he'd need my advice on how to make his way through Europe on $5 a day. At the end of the night he said if I ever found myself in Denver to go out to give him a call. We exchanged numbers and email addresses on scraps of paper I found in my purse - both which I have saved in a photo album since then.
And though looking back, I see how obvious he was, at the time I thought he might be doing a great job recruiting...so I didn't want to read anything into our nightlong conversation. Maybe this was just the royal treatment all firm recruits received? Maybe I was on his list of people to "sell" on the firm?
A few days later he came back up to Fort Collins to take me out for an official date and the rest is history. For the remainder of my senior year we drove back and forth every chance we had to visit each other, sometimes late at night even if just for an hour or two. I was smitten from the start by the way he listened and talked, his caring nature and his funny personality. I felt safe with him like I'd never felt with any guy before. I knew within a few weeks of dating that I would never have eyes for anyone else. By the end of my senior year we'd agreed I would move in with him when I graduated and started at the firm, and six months after that we were engaged. We never overlapped at the firm together because by the time I started he'd quit.
Just about two years after we'd met the night of the auction, we were married. Today we are in our 7
th year of marriage and we have a beautiful 8-month-old baby girl. I tell this story to anyone who will listen because I can't believe my fate - OUR fate - which brought us together when neither of us knew the other existed. Today neither of us working in accounting anymore - me a freelance writer and my husband in small business consulting. We laugh thinking of our first days together, meeting at that auction, courting each other over an accounting student recruiting event. We get a lot of flack from our friends for such a dorky start to our romance, but neither of us cares. If I hadn't been the coordinator of that auction, would he ever have noticed me? If he hadn't been roped into driving up to Fort Collins for a recruiting function, would I have met him? And what if neither of us had started out in a job we didn't really like but had been pushed into by family and professors and people who repeatedly told us, "Everybody always needs an accountant!"...how would our paths have crossed? All I know is that I'm lucky to have met my sweetie. He is the kindest, sweetest, most caring husband and father I have ever known. I couldn't be a luckier Valentine.