Just For Fun…how did you meet your better half??

Old Navy BGO said:
I recall the name of the place...one of many we frrequented in Newport, after suitable pre-gaming at the E -Club. From what I am seeing here, NAPS now is quite a bit different than it was back then. It was tough academically, but we were essentially on our own from Friday after classes to Sunday study hour, and letting 200ish 18 year olds loose in Newport with a fat E-1/E-2 paycheck (well, it was too me at the time !) :) was an invitation to trouble --especially when we ran with some of the salty Fleet guys. Meeting FDW was a good influence, and probably saved me from doing anything stupid the rest of my time at NAPS (and throughout USNA, as our time together the first couple years was limited, and I didn't want to do anything to mess those up).
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I was lucky enough to do reserve duty in Newport many times as I was XO of a reserve ship there for a couple of yrs, did a couple of Active Duty periods at the War College to write case studies and ended up with my final 5 yrs at the War Gaming side of NWC and got so see many of those places and even introduce my kids and wife 2.0 to some of them. Sadly, my favorite bar/restaurant, "Mac's Clam Shack" is long gone after a long evolution and several moves took it from a fisherman's bar on the docks to what was eventually just another in town restaurant. Another great place, the 4th St Diner which is on the circle on the way to gate 1 and the locale for many late-night breakfasts is about to close for good.
 
Blows m
2025 hopeful said:
Well this is a fitting thread, we're celebrating our 20th anniversary this week.

Spouse went to USCGA with a friend of mine from high school. We met at a small New Year's Eve party 1999-2000 at their house. We survived the Y2K scare and married a couple years later. I never liked New Year's and all its hype, but now celebrate it together as the day we met.
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Wow that Y2K was 22 yrs ago. Seems like just yesterday-ish.
 
I had just graduated high school. Friend took me to a party at another friend's house. Saw FDW in the pool and was interested. So was she. She was going into her senior year. I had met the host a few times, but we weren't friends. I really didn't care for the guy. Turns out he had a thing for FDW too. We had a good summer romance, but I wanted to move too fast and was a bit wild in those days. We broke it off at the end of the summer. We met up the next summer and dated again that summer, but broke it off again before she went away to college. We ended up dating a third time the following summer, but it did not end well and I was shocked when she reached out to me the following summer for a 4th try. That was summer of '91 and we've been together ever since. She is the best decision I ever made and she feels the same (that she's the best decision I've ever made).
 
Mrs cb7893 and I met in Krakow at a dorm room party in the fall of 1978. I had not been in the country long enough to speak decent Polish. She spoke no English. We settled on Russian, which was mandatory for her since primary school, and I had four years of it in college. My initial impression was that she was very feminine, but a bit prissy.

She mentioned that she recently returned from a summer long trip which took her to Northern India. My head exploded with questions, the first being, “How does a girl from a communist country whose currency is worthless in the West even imagine that?” Fly to Baku, train to Tehran and then to the Afghan border. Buses without bathrooms across Afghanistan into Pakistan. Onto India. Circle back, returning through southern Pakistan and Iran. Okay, but how did you do it? (If you recall this was the summer of violent demonstrations in Tehran and preparations for the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan.)

She and her male companion, not a boyfriend, wore gold bands and claimed to be married. She got a grub stake of money from friends who wanted sheepskin clothing and turquoise jewelry from Afghanistan. With that, she bought things in Poland that she could sell in the USSR. In the USSR, they bought things that they could resell in Iran and Afghanistan. She brought back the goods for her underwriters and a coat for herself, which she wore like the ladies in Nashville wear mink to the grocery store.

I was thinking to myself, knowing full well that it was physiologically impossible, “Man, this girl’s got b---s.” She’s been demonstrating that ever since.

The dating, mash up of the families, the weddings (civil and religious), the geopolitical divide, her acclimating to the US are stories all by themselves.
 
25 years ago, a beautiful yankee transferred to the south, where I happened to work for the same company. I naturally took pity in her being so far from kin and all, so I would gallantly escort her to various restaurants and other social venues. It helped that she was exotic. Speaking with hands as much as words, while her words were a mile a minute in what seemed a foreign language. We never really argued, since neither of us could understand what the other was saying. I introduced her to nascar and barbeque, she introduced me to hockey and rollatini. Its been like calamari and moonshine ever since.
 
I was tasked to take two guests (I was working on a Dude Ranch) to the local watering hole. Literally, a no stop sign, blink and you'll miss it town.

FDH was playing pool with a friend, I put quarters on the table.

After he handily beat me and my friend, he bought me a beer. An hour later (I think he was a bit tipsy) he told me he was going to 'marry you and make you my very own'. I think I spit out my beer and scoffed. What crap kind of line is that?

That was mid-October of 1993. 2 great kids and decades later, still plugging along.
 
It was the late 70's.

Disco was big and so was the hair.

The Bee Gees and John Travolta were the rage and shoes had ridiculous platforms.

I was a college student by day and worked at a department store by night in L.A. FDW, was also at college and working as a waitress at a popular mid-Wilshire Boulevard coffee shop with this dude standing in front:

1659982377274.png

Starving after work, I would stop in the restaurant for a late dinner and I saw her in her waitress outfit and was immediately smitten.

After raising four kids , countless dogs, cats, rodents and birds, we just finished our 40th year as a married couple.

Time flies.
 
If the Corps wanted me to have a bride they would have issued me one!

Well in reality I met the wife back in high school at a friends house when we were just 16 years old. She was a fancy Catholic school girl and I was a dirty public school kid. We quickly became friends somehow, she kept in touch the entire time I was in the Marines. I was a young 17 when I shipped out. Lots of letters and phone calls, long before cell phones. She says I was clueless and had no idea what was going on. A few days after I finished active duty she kissed me and explained we are not going to be just friends anymore. We were engaged about a year later. Two kids and lots of stories later she is still hanging in there. Can not imagine her not being with me.
 
Old Navy BGO said:
This is another one of those military sayings that CAPT MJ mentioned... we are going to have to start a separate thread, with appropriate trigger warnings !
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  1. If the minimum wasn't good enough, it wouldn't BE the minimum
  2. They can't fry us all (proven wrong on many occasions)
  3. (Capt on loudspeaker) "Folks, we have a really great opportunity"
 
AROTC-dad said:
It was the late 70's.

Disco was big and so was the hair.

The Bee Gees and John Travolta were the rage and shoes had ridiculous platforms.

I was a college student by day and worked at a department store by night in L.A. FDW, was also at college and working as a waitress at a popular mid-Wilshire Boulevard coffee shop with this dude standing in front:

View attachment 12694

Starving after work, I would stop in the restaurant for a late dinner and I saw her in her waitress outfit and was immediately smitten.

After raising four kids , countless dogs, cats, rodents and birds, we just finished our 40th year as a married couple.

Time flies.
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Bob’s Big Boy! That’s a memory. My parents used to like to go there and get fried shrimp platters, I would think I was very grown up and have the half pound o’ ground round steak and fries plate, and mom and I would split a piece of hot fudge sauce cake.
 
Old Navy BGO said:
^ Why was this the first thing I thought when I saw that you had posted a response :) ?

This is another one of those military sayings that CAPT MJ mentioned... we are going to have to start a separate thread, with appropriate trigger warnings !
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Pretty sure if a thread like that is started I will be awarded one of those fancy red banners that say banned! I will try my best to behave. I do mean well.
 
Capt MJ said:
O’Club at NATO base in Naples. NIMITZ Battle Group was in. Think bar scene in first “Top Gun,” no singing though. Bar was awash in aviators and officers from all communities. Dice cups were rolling. Hands were sketching movements in the air. Noise level was high.

I NEVER went to the Club when big fleet groups were inport. I had just flown in from 3 weeks in Palermo where one of my USNS tankers had been repeatedly delayed in a repair facility, and I went down there to bust through Italian molasses-like summer working speed. I always parked my car at the O’Club as a safe place. Taxi dropped me off, I threw my bags in the car, decided to walk into the Club and have some pasta at the bar, as I knew I had nothing in my apartment. I was tired, hungry, hot, and not feeling social. I walked into the Club and 3 steps into the room realized why it was packed wall to wall with men. I felt like meat on a spit with hyenas circling. I was just about to turn around and walk out, when I was hailed by a civilian secretary who worked in my building. I went over to say hi and joined her table. She was sitting with the Air Wing Commander and his squadron skippers; I was introduced. Future DH was at the table. My food came, I ate, and was as minimally social as possible, fending off the many attack runs interrupting my meal. I left as soon as I politely could. Three weeks later, I received a call at my desk from FDH who noted he was at that table, confirmed he had not made an attack run because it was clear to him that wasn’t why I was there, and could he take me to dinner, as he was back in Naples for a few days.

We dated back and forth across the Atlantic. He was a strong, intelligent, funny, fair-minded man who had zero problems with women in the Navy and was completely supportive. 40 years (assuming we make it) in September. He likes to say it feels like 420. Haha. With all the deployments and geographically separated duty stations, we think there were 10-12 years total we didn’t live together.
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So you’re saying it was the flight suit?
😃
 
UHBlackhawk said:
So you’re saying it was the flight suit?
😃
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Summer whites for Navy or civvies. Flight suit not a liberty uniform ashore during a port call. FDH was in civvies. White polo, khakis, navy blazer, think it might have been an air wing polo.
 
My day started terribly. I had just gotten two flat tires. I called a tire shop and he sort of laughed at me and asked if i was driving a Corvette. I said no and he said because those were the same tires the Corvette uses and they went for 300 a piece. This was 1989. So not cheap. That night a friend of a friend asked me if i wanted to go to an organized party connected to the college i had graduated from. I didn't want to go as i was pissed about my tires and at the last moment, i decided to go. At the party, there was this girl i was attracted to. She was with a friend and some other people.. I don't remember now, but for some reason, my group and her group started talking. The girl i like and her friend went to the bathroom and i decided that although i wanted to dance with the girl i was attracted to, i would ask the first one to come out. The friend came out first and no i wasn't waiting by the bathroom. I was standing with rest of the group and when she came back, i asked her out to dance. And rest is as they say history. My life direction was determined by which girl was able to pee the quickest. Not true, really. We all became friends and double-dated all the time with the girl I was originally attracted to. It never would have worked out with her. In any case, me and the friend will be married 30 years next July

To make it even funnier, she lied about her name and age. The name I knew was a lie and she corrected it when asked her about it. She has a weird name and will tell people she has a typical American name. I was 26 at the time and she told me she was 20. She was actually 19 and i wouldn't have asked her out if i knew she was under 20.
 
My sister and my future mother in law worked together and set us up on a blind date as we neither one had much of a social life at the time.
First date was a double date with married friends of mine, went to a haunted house and later supper. Kissed her good night at their front door and she pretty much immediately turned and went inside.

Third date was a Foreigner concert. If you can't fall in love to Foreigner music...I'm just saying.
Engaged after 3 months and married less than a year later.

She later told me that after our first date she went in and told her mom she was going to marry me.

2 kids and 2 grandkids later, December will be 30yrs for us.
 
OldRetSWO said:
They can't fry us all (proven wrong on many occasions)
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One of our squadrons tested this theory a few years ago... they shave their squadron number (I think it was 9) into their heads before recognition. They got to enjoy the unrecognized life for a little bit longer.
 
Saw DH in ROTC my freshman year, his sophomore year, but basically just knew who each other was. The following year we actually talked to one another, but didn't date until the year after that -- his senior year, my junior year. Got engaged while he was waiting to go to UPT during my senior year; got married on a three day weekend halfway thru his UPT, while I was waiting to go on active duty. Just celebrated 40 years.
 
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