Meant to be Together

At my sister’s wedding, I ended my matron of honor toast with “You don’t marry someone you can live with, you marry the person who you cannot live without.”

After almost 18 years of marriage (twenty-plus years together), Jim and I are still in love, and still each other’s best friend and business partner. We have two great kids who love us in spite of everything we do to ruin their lives, parents who love us unconditionally, and a huge extended family of friends and relatives that finds us entertaining.

I have a marriage that many people insist is not possible – we have had one argument (and boy, were we young and drunk…). We discuss everything and agree to disagree when it happens. We don’t equally share in the household chores, as Jim is a fabulous cook and I hate grocery shopping and putting laundry away (even though I will wash and fold all of it). However, my ability to whip-up fabulous appetizers and desserts from scratch, along with cutting the back forty acres with a walking lawnmower helps even the scales at times.

The weird thing is, somewhere along the line we were destined to meet: Our first encounter was when I was six and Jim was four, while I stood on the lawn of my aunt’s parent’s apartment the day of her wedding, decked-out in my lavender flower girl dress. At the time, Jim’s family lived directly across the street, a mere 100 yards away from where I stood posing for pictures.

Skip ahead to my high school years, when Jim’s high school girlfriend lived across the street from my grandmother’s house, and his high school classmate lived right next door to her. Jim still remembers seeing my sister and me in my grandma’s driveway when we came to visit.

Jump forward to college: Jim dated a girl from college who lived down the block from my aunt and uncle (cue Twilight Zone music – the same aunt whose wedding I stood up to as a child).

We both attended Northern Illinois University, a year-and-a-half apart. I majored in journalism, Jim majored in communications, and both of us worked at the campus-run television station, yet again missed meeting each other by twelve months but still somehow managed to share some of the same friends.

We finally met when I hired Jim as a production assistant for a film shoot. As a producer, I was reviewing resumes and decided to only call on NIU alumni. When I called his house to speak to him, I of course asked to speak to him, not knowing he shared his dad’s name. “Which one?” a friendly voice asked at the other end of the phone. Without hesitating, I immediately asked for the cute one (I was quite the professional in my youth), and thank God I was treated to a hearty laugh and the perfect response, “Well, that really doesn’t narrow it down much for me, but I think you want my son.” This sounded like a fun family.

Jim claims to this day that he knew he was going to marry me from the minute he saw me. We started dating after our third shoot together (fourteen-hour days lead to a lot of downtime and long conversations). Slowly our histories unraveled, and we began to discover how our paths almost crossed again and again.

The absolute kicker was when we were looking at photographs, and one picture featured Jim standing in front of a lavender-sided fishing cabin. I stopped and stared, almost without words. “What the hell are you doing at Hellecksons?” I asked. “My family has gone there every year for our fall fishing trip since I was at least eight, and I brought friends here in college for a ski trip! I’ve eaten more meals at Molliter’s than probably any other lodge!”

Jim stared back. “I’ve been fishing there for years with my Uncle Bob, probably since I was sixteen. In fact, I almost drowned there one year.”  You really can’t forget a place in Okee, Wisconsin that features purple fishing cabins.

When we shared our story line with our family for the first time, my Uncle Johnny, without missing a beat, asked, “So exactly how long have you been stalking my niece?”  The difference between destiny and a stalker? Mutual true love or a restraining order...

We’re a happy couple, and somehow, for some reason, we were meant to meet, meant to be together; I’ve never believed in coincidences. I don’t offer unsolicited advice on marriage, or anything else for that matter; I only know what works for us.

We’ve ridden our fair share of life’s roller coasters: Entrepreneurship, wealth, poverty, joy, multiple surgeries, love, illness, lawsuits, laughter, addiction, interventions, revelations, chronic pain, life, death, rebirth. Through it all, we have stayed strong, learned not to sweat the small stuff, never took ourselves too seriously, and in the end found the humor of it all. Time plus tragedy does equal comedy, sometimes you just need to look a little harder.

Today, this Valentine’s Day, I will break my rule and offer one bit of unsolicited advice: Tell all the people you love you love them, and tell them often. Don’t save it for a special day or special occasion, don’t think it will mean any less if and when you say it more. You’ll be amazed how good it feels to say, and how great it feels to hear.

Happy Valentine’s Day to all…