The Story of Us
- Kallie Mueller
- Nov 1, 2019
- 5 min read
Every love story is fun to read about, but (big surprise) ours is my favorite. How do you begin a story that is still unfolding, unraveling (in a good way), beginning, and ending all at the same time? The beauty of love stories and togetherness is that it is never truly over. Each story lives on through generations of people, and places; it begins with new seasons, it melts into time, and it's incredible that you have found yourself seeing ours.
Let me paint you the picture:
This story begins with a chance, an online dating website, a 4th of July band parade, and a family get together. Dan was in Fairfax, Virginia to see his brother in a band parade. While this seems normal, the high school he attended has a crazy good band....they are from California. That band director is from Fairfax VA, and takes his band across country to this parade each year. I happened to be celebrating the 4th with my family at my aunt's house.
Being that we were in the same city, the site matched us. He came across my screen and I thought "Oh a Marine....that's bad news....but he's cute." His perspective of us matching was seeing one of my photos of me holding a fish and thinking "Oh she's outdoorsy and actually seems real".
After talking for a while he informed me he wasn't from Virginia and he didn't even live in Fairfax. Turns out he was stationed in North Carolina, and I was in school in Virginia Beach. In case you aren't from around these parts, that's a 3 hour drive away. So we decided friends worked for us. I deleted the app soon after because it was weird and I was never looking to meet someone on it. Dan didn't count, he was just my modern day pen pal. I never thought I would really meet him. Months came and went, bad relationships came and went, and he was always there to give me advice. He was always the one I called first when I questioned myself or my future. He was the calm in my crazy. Most of the time he knew how I felt before I could even tell him something was wrong.
Our lives were busy, he was aircrew so he was never on the ground, and when he was, he was in another country or sleeping. I was trying to focus on school and get myself a degree. I had been through several really crappy relationships and I always asked Dan why he was so perfect and why he wouldn't just give me a chance. He always insisted we lived too far away and that military life was nothing he wanted to bring anyone into.
He always told me I was too good for these guys I was finding. He hated all of them, and would send me songs like "Break up with him" by Old Dominion vocalizing his disapproval. I told him his girlfriend was crazy, and that he needed way better. We both knew how we felt about each other and we were (FINALLY) ready to try this long distance thing. (Hallelujah chorus)
I was pacing my apartment floor, anxious for his arrival. I was terrified. I was scared he wasn't real. I had always told him whenever I first met him I would hug tackle him so he better catch me. He was slick and responded with "I'll always catch you, babe." I ran down about a million stairs (it was like 13 stairs but it felt like a million okay?) and jumped right into his arms. He caught me. It was movie worthy, honestly. He felt like home. Any fears I had about this ending horribly and him not being real were gone. He was real, and he was finally with me.
A few weeks later he drove up, picked me up, and drove me to my hometown to pick up my car. This was when he met my parents. I may or may not have lied about how I met him so they wouldn't automatically shun me and hate him. They met him, and they loved him. My mom who doesn't like people other than her family, hugged him. If I didn't know he was the one before, I sure knew then. Soon after meeting them, he met the whole crazy bunch; all my cousins, aunts, uncles, dogs, everybody. (That's a lot of people) They all loved him. After we dated a while I eventually told my parents I met him online. They already sorta knew. Now we joke that I found him on Amazon. . . Amazon Prime.
Fast forward to engagement. We had just gotten back from vacation in California. I hoped any moment would be it throughout the whole trip. We returned and he was gearing up to leave on his last deployment, so I was sad thinking he wasn't going to propose before he left for six months. I guess he decided last minute that he wanted to propose before he left, so since he was still on leave in Virginia he had his buddy in North Carolina overnight ship my ring. It didn't come. We went to a free concert on the beach and he was really pre-occupied and on his phone so I thought something was up. He told me the ring was basically lost in the mail. I freaked out because number one he said he was going to propose, number two my ring was LOST. We had to drive him back to NC the next day so it was a long night of hoping the ring would turn up.
The next morning I was getting my things ready to drive him back to base. He was sitting on the bed, and started talking about how he wasn't ready to go back and he got very serious. I hugged him and felt his heart racing so I thought he was just nervous for deployment. Nope. He dropped down to one knee, with a plastic ring from around a soda bottle and asked me to marry him right there in my room. The ring came the next day, and he left for 6 months.
When he got back, he had a month left until he was done with active duty. In January 2017 he finished his final deployment, February 27th his active duty was done, and February 28th we got married at the courthouse. April soon followed and we had our wedding. Most people didn't know we had gotten married before. So we have two anniversaries and we celebrate both.
Our wedding was the hottest day in April since 1952, but we were so thankful to have both of our families in town.
Now you know my favorite story!
with grace,
Kal
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