Staff Sweetheart Stories: How They Met, Fell in Love

 Mrs. Campbell

Jim and I met in high school.  I attended St. Joseph’s Academy, an all-girls school, and Jim went to Abbot Pennings, one of the two all-boys schools.  I had  heard rumors that he liked me, but since he was so shy at the time he would look away every time I looked at him.  I naturally assumed that he was uninterested and even a bit cocky.  Since I was a cheerleader for Premontre, the other all-boys school, and my dad was the basketball coach there, it did not help our dating situation that Jim played basketball for Pennings.   Not many high school romances survived that rivalry.

Fast forward about four years to when my brother told me to meet him in Door County for the Fourth of July where he would be with his friends, including one named “Soup.”  At the time I did not put it together that Soup was Jim’s nickname, so it was quite a surprise to see him again.  This time he was not shy, but maybe still a little cocky, and the rest is history….

Going back to rivalry between the two schools… The wedding card we received from Abbot Tom Dewane, the former principal of Premontre,  said “Congratulations but I still can not believe you married a Pennings guy!”

 

Mrs. Huntley

Once upon a time, there was a young singer and a young guitar player.  Both were very busy with their lives, and both were looking forward to finishing high school and getting on with things…the singer off to college and the guitar player off to the Navy. Well, as life would happen, there was a choir director that needed a young singer and a guitar player for his Easter passion play.  The choir director asked the young singer to perform and sing and after some convincing, she agreed to fit it into her busy school and work schedule.  The choir director asked the guitar player to play and act as Judas, and after some convincing, he agreed to fit it into his busy school and work schedule.

As life and fate would have it, he took one look at the young singer, and she took one look at Judas, and the rest is history.  The young singer was enamored with the guitar player, and the  guitar player was smitten.  She could talk of nothing to her girlfriends but the young Judas…about how talented he was, about how cute he was, and about his plans to have adventures.  He could talk of nothing but her to his friends, about how talented she was, about how smart she was, and about her big plans for college. Before they knew it, it was Easter and the passion play had been performed, the songs had been sung. They came to realize, though, that it may have been an accident that brought them together, but it was a united passion that has sustained them through almost thirty years of marriage.

Mr. Schultz

I imagine my situation is not unlike many other people in this world. I found love when I least expected it. I first met my wife when I was a senior in college at the University of Wisconsin-Eau Claire. At the time, I had been dating my high school sweetheart for four years and was convinced that we were destined to be together forever. I was wrong.

One December night my roommates and I received a phone call pleading for us to attend a graduation party that evening for a girl that had dated one of my roommates. I did not particularly care for her for many reasons and really didn’t feel like socializing with her. Despite just getting back from an intense game of racketball and having exams to study for, our mutual friend convinced myself and my roommates to attend the party. We showered and headed over to the girl’s apartment.

When we arrived, we found that there were not many people there, but it turned out to be a good thing because it allowed me to meet my future wife. Had there been more people there I doubt we would have met. As I mentioned, I did not care for the guest of honor, so I stayed clear of her and mingled with the few others just to pass the time, hoping it would pass by quickly. In our conversation I found out that my future wife was from an area north of Green Bay and that I had been to her parents’ restaurant several times in the past. At the time it was a fun conversation and nothing more.

A few months had passed since the party, and my girlfriend of four years and I decided to go our own ways after we had spent the Christmas break together and realized that over the four years of college at different campuses we had grown apart, and it wasn’t going to work. As fate would have it, shortly after the break-up I ran into my future wife at the library. We talked a little more and realized that we had actually been studying on the same floor for four years and somehow did not cross paths (that we realized) until then. As our conversation went on, we discovered more commonalities between us. We agreed to date at that time and the rest, as they say, is history. My wife and I dated for 3.5 years before we were married and we will be married 12 years this August and I love her more now than ever. So, thank you to the girl I didn’t care for and our mutual friend who persisted that we attend that party. Don’t go looking for love; it will find you when you least expect it.

Mr. Weiss

Kim and I first met at a Notre Dame football game a couple days before the start of our Freshman year. However, after that we didn’t really talk all that much our first couple of years of high school. Our junior year, we had English class together and I wanted to ask Kim to prom, but she had been asked by someone else earlier in the day that I called to ask her. But the week after prom, we went on the service trip to Canton. For the first time, Kim and I had a chance to talk and really get to know each other. When we got back, we talked on the phone, and I asked her if she would like to go on a date with me. She said yes, and we went to Zesty’s and to the St. Matthew’s playground (they had swings like the place where we stayed in Canton). We continued talking and went out a couple more times. By the beginning of summer, we were officially dating (though without Facebook back then, I’m not sure how anyone knew). We have been together ever since, married ten years this past August!

 

Mr. Tobias-Becker

From Zero to Hero_

I worked at a multi-discipline design firm with a tight-knit group of designers, architects and support staff. At that time I also lived on a small horse farm that was a regular gathering place on weekends for picnics, parties and gatherings. When I asked a coworker/friend if he wanted to ride horses that weekend, he declined due to a prior commitment but offered that his sister was a rider and she might be interested. That turned into dating (his sister).

That is until she took a fall off one of my horses. She insisted she was all right and only asked to “lie down for a little while.” Being a veteran of various mishaps on horseback, I was well aware of the injuries that one could incur.  (We rode hard–cross-country jumping fences, stonewalls, Irish banks etc.)

Therefore I insisted that she let me take her to the hospital for a check-up. They found that she had internal bleeding and needed immediate, exploratory surgery. So I got to meet her parents (for the first time) in the emergency room as we all waited. Thinking that our relationship was now a thing of the past, I braced for the news from the doctor. “We removed her spleen, but this young man saved your daughter’s life,” the doctor said as he entered the room. I objected, saying, “It was my horse and she was my responsibility.” Everyone else in the room disagreed with me, including Anne. She is now my wife and we both take care of each other.

 

Mr. Pauly

I was going back to Cardinal Stritch University to get my teaching certification so that I could teach high school theology.  I heard that there were tryouts for the play Godspell on my first day of school as I was walking through the hallways.  Godspell is my favorite play of all time, and I had seen a Broadway production of it at West High School here in Green Bay when I was a teenager and dreamed of someday being in the show.

I was cast as Jesus and I met Ginney, who was also in the show.  We married a couple of years later and actually went to New York two years ago to see a Broadway production of Godspell as well.

 

Mrs. Thillman

I had just gotten back from a week-long cheerleading camp up in Eagle River, Wisconsin, when a senior boy stopped over at our home to ask my dad to write him a letter of recommendation for his college application. After only being with girls for the last week, I seized on the opportunity to converse with a guy. I’m still not sure if my husband Peter ever got around to asking my dad, his English teacher, for the recommendation, but that conversation began a relationship that weathered a year of high school and an on-again/off-again long distance relationship throughout college and his stint in the Peace Corps.  We married about 8 years after that first conversation, and we still manage to find things to talk about after 22 years of marriage.

 

Mrs. Brandtner

I was entering my fifth year of teaching art at St. Joseph Academy, and my roommate, Rhonda Brandtner, was getting married in “the Garden of Eden,” also known as Galesville, WI, on Aug. 18.  A group of teachers and I took a beautiful four-hour drive across the state to attend the marriage celebration.  It was at this event that I met Dave Brandtner, brother of my roommate. Dave had recently moved to Appleton, WI, for a new job and knew very few people in the area. I volunteered to show him around the Green Bay area the next weekend.  We were married eight months later.

Mrs. Schmidt

I was in my late 30’s and still had not met ‘Mr. Right.’  I had become good friends with two  teachers at NDA, Larry Laraby (English) & Chris Gray (Social Studies).  For years I had been hearing about a mutual friend of theirs, simply known as ‘tall John.’  (He’s 6’5.)  Finally one day, when I was feeling impatient with my dating life, I asked Larry some questions.  “This John friend of yours,” I said, “is he single?”  “Yes,” he said.  I said, “Well, How old is he”?  Larry replied, “He’s about 40 years old.”  So I said (with my hands on my hips), “WELL, DO YOU THINK HE WOULD LIKE ME?!!!!!!”

A few weeks later, January 12, 2007, I was making plans to have lunch with Larry over at El Azteca and he casually added that ‘tall John’ would be joining us for lunch☺.  I was happy to finally be meeting this guy that I had been hearing about for the last 10 years.  We met that day and had a nice lunch.  (We have our own booth there…they seat us there every time we eat there.)  A few weeks later when I was having a dinner party, I told Larry to invite John to join us and he did.

From there, we began corresponding.  The first time he asked me out on a date was in a text message.  I had to go to Ms. Mahlock at lunch to figure out how to open a text message, lol.  I was new to this text messaging thing and John was quite the ‘techie.’  When we started dating, it felt like we had known each other for a long time because we had heard so much about each other from Larry and Chris.  Our first official date (without any of our friends along) was a nice dinner and  attending the NDA musical ‘Thoroughly Modern Millie’ (starring Elise Hearden).  We dated for a year, got engaged, and married one year later on March 14, 2009.  Let me just say that he was worth the wait!  Amen