How did we meet?

Time for some personal though still FAMILY HISTORY blogging. Got the idea from Kay's blog on how she met her husband. That's something that everyone NEEDS TO KNOW about their parents and grand parents-how they met. My parents and my maternal grandparents met at a dance. My paternal grandparents met through a mutual friend. So how did I met my husband? The answer is...at a dance, of course.

Being newly divorced and lonely at the time, I had been going to our church's singles dance for several months without meeting anyone to date. My husband (to be) was also newly divorced but had NEVER been to any dance anywhere when he choose Friday the 13th in Oct 1992 to visit two dances: one in Salt Lake City which he left early, and then one in Provo, Utah. I noticed him when he walked into the church dance in Provo late and stood shyly at the sidelines.

Moving closer, I started a conversation and asked if he knew how to do the line dance that was going on at the moment. He said...no, he didn't. With my background as a dance teacher, you can probably picture us dancing into the sunset BUT my husband is an engineer and NOT a dancer. So, of course, I offered to teach him. We danced or rather I tried to teach him how to dance the rest of the evening unsuccessfully. At the end of the evening we decided to meet the next night for another Singles dance which we did.

The funniest thing about our initial meeting was that he didn't even live in Utah but was there from New Mexico visiting his daughter Alicia who was attending BYU. Our second dance/a date led to an invite to my house for dinner the next day before he returned to New Mexico. Phone calls and letters were soon our mode of courting over the hundreds of miles separating us until my new boy friend could make the long drive (10 hours) or flight from Phoenix, Arizona to Salt Lake City for a weekend date in my hometown. (I didn't know at the time that Allen's ex-wife was also attending the singles dances occasionally. One weekend when he wasn't in town, she came up to me and said...he's a really nice guy. I found that to be a really strange but true endorsement. Evidently she had seen us dancing together the previous week.) 

It didn't take long before Allen and I fell in love. (Read this poem about my feelings of overcoming trials like a divorce in your life.) I soon invited him for Thanksgiving dinner and then for Christmas celebrations. By Valentine's we were officially engaged, then married in June 1993 in the Salt Lake City LDS TEMPLE. Fifteen years later, we are retired and enjoying life in So. Utah but we don't go to dances anymore. They served their purpose to give us (as well as my parents and grandparents) the opportunity to meet. 

So tell us how you met your spouse, if you are married. Ask your parents and grandparents-if they are still around how they met-if you don't know and write it down for your posterity. Now, you are doing FAMILY HISTORY-preserving memories for your descendants and loved ones.