My first year of marriage: How I Met My Wife

I got married a year ago today.

It’s crazy.

As I think about how we met, there’s always been a certain amount of fatalism in our story. We met on eHarmony. I was living in Minnesota, she was in Atlanta. The first time we ever talked was February 20, 2017. It was a Monday night, I thought she was cute and seemed nice. Never in a million years dreamed that I was messaging my future wife.

A couple weeks earlier, she had gotten out of a relationship. Had that not happened when it happened, we might not have ever met. Because she was looking to move further into Atlanta to be closer.

In the same few days the relationship ended, her dad accepted a job in the St. Louis area and was going to move from the south to the midwest.

The rest of Kari’s family was living in Alabama at the time. Kari was teaching in suburban Atlanta, but she wasn’t from Atlanta and didn’t have anything keeping her there. So with her parents getting ready to move, they asked Kari if she wanted to go to St. Louis, live at home, save some money.

She said yes and when she joined eHarmony, planning to move to St. Louis, she listed that as her city.

For me, in western Minnesota (not exactly the world’s most populous area,) I had widened my eHarmony search parameters to include Wisconsin, Iowa, Missouri. But not Georgia.

So had that relationship not ended at the same time that her parents had decided to move, we wouldn’t have met. Had her parents not decided to move, she likely wouldn’t have moved to a different part of the country, away from family by herself. Had her parents not moved to an area that was within my search parameters, we would not have met.

All of the things in our lives matter. They ripple out. They’re connected to each other. Ripples from one event impact other things happening in our lives which impact those around us, our families, our futures. Every day matters, every choice matters.

When I was single, more than anything, I wanted to be married. There were setbacks along the way. Times of frustration. But I never doubted that it would happen. But a funny thing about marriage is that once you get married to someone, it’s almost like you forget life before ever being married to that person.

Happy anniversary Kari! I love you babe.

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