How I Met Your Father — In Person…Over the Internet

How I Met Your Father — In Person…Over the Internet is a part of a series celebrating love and marriage by telling the stories of some of our Nashville Moms Blog contributors and how they met their partners. Enjoy more of these sweet stories here!

You might say our story is not the classic boy meets girl, eyes locking, and falling in love sort of romance tale. Instead, we have a story that’s a bit more—unique. While technically we did lock eyes, it was from 2,200 miles away. Let me explain . . .

In 2005, my-now-husband was stationed at Camp Pendleton near San Diego, California serving as a US Marine, and I was a college student near Chattanooga, Tennessee. Our friends (and respective roommates) “B” and “L” were dating long distance. To ease the ache of not having each other around, they’d spend hours in front of their web cams chatting and watching movies together. Occasionally, we tired of having our sidekicks always in front of those webcams, so we’d stick our faces in the camera and chat with (ok, flirt with!) each other right alongside them. Our friends weren’t all that excited about our interrupting their quality time, so they came up with a plan:

L to me: “Hey, Sarah? Ryan really wants to call you. Is that ok?”
B to him: “Hey, Ryan? Sarah is really hoping you’ll call her. Here’s her number.”

Mind you, none of this was true! While we may have enjoyed flirting while our friends were chatting, we never imagined anything would come of it. We were on completely opposite sides of the country!

Even though it started with their made up story, I’m so glad he called. My charm and wit quickly hooked him (kidding!); and, before I knew it, we were talking for hours at night. A few short months later, I flew out to California to meet him for New Years. We spent New Years Eve at Disneyland’s California Adventure Park, and (despite the pouring rain) we had permanent smiles on our faces and laughed with each other all day. I knew then that we had something special and started making plans to move to California after my college graduation the next July.

I finished my classes, found a roommate on Craigslist (I was too in love to be scared; plus she ended up being rad), packed all my belongings into my little Ford Focus Hatchback, and off I went across the country to chase love. After some time spent getting to know each other better, a seven month deployment, and several trips around the country to meet our families, we were engaged to be married. We tied the knot in December of 2007 in Ocean Beach, CA.

After Ryan’s enlistment ended, we packed our bags and moved—sight unseen—to Nashville, Tennessee! This is where we have spent seven of the eight years of our marriage and where became parents to our beautiful daughter. He was the best chance I ever took, and I’m so thankful for our friends—and the fortuitous payoff of their scheming.