How did your parents and/or ILs meet? Any great stories?

[unsinkable]

I know we've done how did we meet our DHs (or DWs) but how did your parents or in-laws meet?

 

I am pretty sure my MIL & FIL met in high school but the cute part is that they got married on Thanksgiving Day and served a traditional turkey dinner at their reception.

 

My mom was on a date & they were dancing. Her date wanted to introduce her to his friend so the date danced her over to the edge of the dance floor to where my dad was eating at a table. My mom said he could barely lift his head from his plate to say hello.

 

My mom told her date as they danced away, "That is the rudest man I ever met!" :lol:

 

Who's next? :D

[amy g.]

My parents met at a wedding. Dad was brother of the groom. Mom was sister of the bride.

[Sasharowan]

Mom and Dad have known each other since they were 10 and they are looking at 42 years of marriage next month. MIL and FIL met when he came over to take care of a plumbing problem either at her parents or a place she was baby sitting. They had around 40 years together when he died.

[The Girls' Mom]

My mom picked my dad up off the side of the road during a rain storm. He was 18 or 19 and hitch-hiking. I'm rather glad he wasn't a serial killer..lol.

 

They were only married for 4-5 years.

 

My inlaws met through family. My FIL's grandfather lived across the road from my MIL.

[Mejane]

My parents met when my dad went to her house to pick up her sister for a date. He and aunt were totally wrong for each other, but my parents were obviously right. They were happily married for forty years. :)

[jujsky]

My parents & ILs didn't meet in an unusual way, but my grandparents did! They are 2nd cousins (yes, I'm inbred -- no, I'm not talking to myself, I'm talking to my 4th cousin) and they met at a funeral of a mutual relative. Strangely my mom & her siblings are much more normal than her 1st cousins who are NOT inbred :D Anyway, I still can't quite imagine how the hook-up happened. I don't know if they were gazing at each other over the casket and their eyes met or what, but they fell in love and it was pretty instantaneous. They corresponded mostly through letters (she lived in Canada, he lived in Maine) and only saw each other 3 times before they were married. They had 5 kids and were married 59 years until my grampy's death almost 2 years ago.

[dangermom]

My parents were at Berkeley in the late 60's. As you might imagine, there were not a lot of Mormon students there at the time, but there were some. They met at a dance at the Institute building (most colleges have one, it's a place for LDS students to take religion classes, but the Berkeley one used to be a mansion and is an excellent hangout). My dad was totally smitten but couldn't actually describe my mom to his roommate when he got home--he said she had blue eyes.

 

My dad's parents had also met at a dance at Berkeley, in the 30's. I met my husband at the LDS Institute at Berkeley in the 90's, in the same room the dance was in 25 years before that. He did actually go to a dance I was going to--his first dance ever--but it took him so long to get up the nerve to ask me to dance that I went home without realizing that he was going to!

[cathmom]

My maternal grandparents met in NYC, probably in 1930 or 1931. My grandmother was from an Irish Catholic family. She was a waitress at Schraft's and had never been married (she was 30 at the time). He was ten years older, Protestant, and his first wife had died about six years earlier. His two children lived with relatives. He used to come into Schraft's and they met there. One day he was visiting his daughter and was on the second or third floor of the house and looked out the window into the neighbor's backyard. There was my grandmother - I think she knew the people and was visiting. They began seeing each other. She knew that her parents would never approve, though. Her father died at the end of 1931, her mother 3 months later, and three months after that, she married my grandfather. And the rest is history.

 

My parents and in-laws are both divorced, so there's no point in telling their stories.

[angela in ohio]

My grandmother and grandfather met when he was the 35 year old church piano tuner staying with her family. She was 17 yo. She had a big Catholic wedding with an abnormally large bouquet. ;)

 

My parents met when they were hanging out with friends in the McDonalds parking lot (back when McD's was drive-thru only.) My mom was a sweet young lady, and my dad was a troubled kid with a fast car. :D They got married in my grandparent's backyard on a few days notice after he was drafted.

 

I have no idea how dh's mom met his dad, but it was her second of four marriages, and she already had a child from outside her first marriage. :001_huh:

 

And I picked dh up in a college bar. :D

[Amy in TX]

His younger brother had broken his jaw playing baseball. My mom was the nurse taking care of him. Dad thought his brother's nurse was very pretty, and the rest is history!

 

BTW, my dad's younger brother (with the broken jaw) eventually married my mom's younger sister :).

[kalanamak]

My parents were both mountain climbers in the 1930's and met in a climbing club. My mother said marriages (many) from the club were less likely to fail because the males and females had seen each other cold, tired, and grubby. My mother said my father was cheerful and encouraging, no matter how tired. His encouraging words "only a half mile more" became the club motto:

 

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/University_of_Colorado_at_Boulder#Hiking_Club

 

My mother's parents met in the house of some wealthy Bronxville people, where my MGM was a servant, and my MGF was trying to get funding for an invention. Both were from Germany.

 

My PGM was a college student at KU, class of 1901, and my PGF was a law student there, class of 1904. I have read his letters to her, and there were, while not explicit, very passionate.

 

My PGM's parents met in Vermont. He had been a Civil War soldier, from Vermont, and a war buddy knew his future wife's family. He moved west as the railroads did, directing the erection of the telegraph wires that ran along side the tracks. When winter came, he settled in and started a goods store. His future wife came out. She was from a goods store family, and they settle near Remudamom in the 1870s. That GGM, along with 3 other women, made a bit of history by being the first all-female town counsel in Kansas.

[QueenCat]

My mom's brother wanted to take my dad's sister out. Dad's sister couldn't date one-on-one, had to be a double date. They made their siblings go with them. Both couples married, and have been for 50 and 47 years. In-laws met when his mom's best friend introduced her to her brother. They've been married 50 years. Unfortunately, mil and aunt (fil's sister) can no longer stand each other. Aunt says she doesn't regret the marriage since she has wonderful nephews, a niece, and great nieces and nephews.

[Carrie12345]

My parents worked together when they were 18. At some point down the line, they discovered they had been in the same kindergarten class, and my mom has the class picture to prove it.

 

In between those years, my mother's family had moved across the country and back, so I do think that's pretty cool!

[Sandy in Indy]

My parents met during WWII at a dance the local ladies held for the soldiers. Dad said he saw the prettiest girl in the world, wearing a white dress, walk in the door and he was hooked. They were 2 weeks shy of their 60th anniversary when Dad died.

 

I should add that Dad was stationed in Florida when they met and so Mom was a southern girl. The girls also had a little newspaper they printed. The headline when my parents married...Barney's marrying a d*mn Yankee! (Barney was my mom's lifelong nickname.)

[tricia]

My dad went to my mom's house to take her older sister Donna on a date. But Donna was sick that night so he said, "Well, she has two other sisters I'll take one of them." My mom was like, what the heck, I'll go. And the rest is history.

[Retired]

My mom lived at YWCA and my dad was dating one of the other girls, he ended up married to my mom 4 months later. They have been married 41 years.

 

My dh's parents meet when his dad was working at Kiddy Land, a 1950's permanent amusement park. My mil would stay with aunts each summer.They saw each other every summer and then married 6 years later. They were married 45 years when he passed away.

[gingersmom]

My parents met on a blind date. My mother was 19 and my father was 26. A mutual friend fixed them up.

 

They dated for 3 months, got engaged and married several months later. My grandfather was dying (brain tumor) and they wanted him at the wedding so things got moving quickly.

 

They stayed married despite filing for divorce yet never going through with it and living separately for 10 years.

[AFwife Claire]

My parents have a neat story. My mom was the daughter of an Air Force Lt. col. who was stationed at the Pentagon in the early 1960s. He got orders for Germany right before my mon's senior year of high school. She wanted to stay in D.C. with friends so she could graduate (she had already been at 3 different high schools because of his transfers), but my grandpa was adamant that the family stay together. So she moved with them to Ramstein AB, Germany.

 

My dad was a cadet at the Air Force Academy, and the junior class was taking their "overseas field trip" to Germany in 1963, the same year the President Kennedy was over there giving his big "Berlin" speech and whatnot. The cadets were staying in the Weisbaden hotel, but they all got kicked out to make room for the President and his entourage. The cadets were moved to Ramstein, where the Officers Wives Club decided to put on a dance for their entertainment. All available young ladies from the surrounding area were quickly invited, including my mom. When she walked in, one of the head wives took her arm and said, "Marsha, I have a cadet I'd like to introduce you to . . ." and the rest is history! Well, actually they wrote letters and had a long-distance relationship for several years, until 1967, my mom's senior year of college. My dad had graduated from the Academy in 1965, gone to navigator training, and was preparing to go over to Vietnam. My parents had a quickly-planned wedding over her spring break, and they had a one week honeymoon. My mom likes to refer to "the year they first lived together", but for them, that was 18 months after they actually got married! : ) My parents have been married for almost 43 years, and their relationship is a real inspiration to me!

[knit247]

My parents were set up on a blind date in August. Both lived in VA. My Mom left to teach for a year in NM a few weeks later. They corresponded daily (seriously!) by mail and were engaged on New Years Eve. They married the following July - after exactly 11 dates.

 

My husband and I were set up on a blind date in July while he was home (NC) on leave from the USMC. He went back to HI, where he lived, 4 days later. We wrote letters and talked 3 hours /day (seriously!) on the phone, and were engaged Dec. 19th. We married the following June - after seeing each other less than 30 days total.

 

Really neat - the similarities!

[Caroline]

My parents met in the dining hall at Ohio State. My dad worked in the nursing students' dining hall because the food was better. Due to their clinical schedule, the nursing students had a separate dining ha that made smaller portions of food more often. Anyway, my dad thought my mom was cute so he asked his cousin, who was in my mom's sorority to fix them up on a blind date. Not long after that, my dad failed out of college and my mom dumped him. When he went back and got his degree, she agreed to marry him. They have been married for 46 years.

 

My inlaws sat next to each other at the symphony. He asked her out for coffee. He went home to India the next week where his parents had arranged a marriage for him. He left quickly and he and my MIL were married within a month. They were married for 30+ years before he died. We miss him a lot.

 

My grandparents met when they were 7. My grandpa had a new bike that my grandma wanted to ride. They were married for almost sixty years when he died.

[Caroline]

One more thing...Kalanamak, you need to write a book or several books. You have the most interesting life!

[Word Nerd]

Nothing unusual in how my parents or my ILs met. But my dad's brother and my aunt met when my dad went out on a date with her (only one--they had nothing in common, and that's still true to this day) when they were all in high school together. :)

[Denisemomof4]

my parents met in school. My dad was in 2nd or 3rd grade. I saw a book where he drew a heart and inside it said, "I love Lorraine" They never dated anyone else and married right out of high school, having their first child - conceived on their honeymoon. They remained happily married until dad died. He hung on as long as he could to take care of my mom, severely debilitated from Parkinsons and dementia, but he just couldn't hold out. My mom died 11 months later, almost to the day. Their dog died shortly after that.:crying:

[kalanamak]

One more thing...Kalanamak, you need to write a book or several books. You have the most interesting life!

 

Retirement! I intend to start in the 70s and work backward and forward, rather like a Huxley novel I like titled Eyeless in Gaza.

 

Many a night I lie awake and think of chapter titles. My favorite is a comment my ex made about me....about how worried he was that I'd "never find anyone else" because of, as he worded it "your age, your weight, and your personality". :lol::lol::lol::lol:

[Onceuponatime]

My mom and dad met in high school. When my dad dated my mom and met my grandmother for the first time, he said, "Oh, I had a cow named Emma." My grandmother's name was Emma. They eloped.

[elegantlion]

My in-laws were high school sweethearts. Unfortunately he passed away young, at age 32, leaving MIL a widow with 5 children under the age of 12. Of course I never met him, but we talk about him a lot. My son is named for him.

 

My parents met because my mother's sister was dating my father's cousin. They had one or two dates before he shipped out for 2 years in Japan for the service. They wrote letters and got engaged during that time. Still married 50 1/2 years later.

[BarbecueMom]

My parents hooked up at a party. She was 23, he said he was 22. He was actually only 18.

 

I was born less than a year later. :glare:

[fhjmom]

My mom and dad went to high school together, but I don't know for sure how they met for the first time.

 

My favorite "how they met" story is my paternal grandparents. They were married in 1908, so it was a while back. My grandmother was walking home from school and jumped over a rock fence without paying much attention. My grandfather was on the other side of the fence, guarding a road crew of convicts with several prison guard dogs. When my grandmother jumped the fence, she landed in the middle of the dogs, startling them and the dogs started to attack her. My grandfather jumped between her and the dogs and called them off, then tried to calm her down; he ended up walking her home and as they say, the rest was history.

[eternalknot]

My inlaws grew up in the same teeny, tiny eastern european village, and were classmates. Their moms were best friends. My FIL's family emigrated during his teenage years, but the moms kept in touch. As an adult my FIL returned to the old country, and re-ignited his childhood friendship with MIL.

 

They dated for a year or so, then married. They've been married about 35-40 years, I don't keep track but that'd be right based on their kids' ages.

 

It was such a small village that pickin's were admittedly slim, but we know their moms engineered the whole thing LOL. The moms remained best friends, and continued to live as neighbors even after re-settling in the U.S. Both FIL's & MIL's extended families eventually immigrated to the U.S., all invading a small 3-mile square area and turning it into a mini-eastern europe :)

[OrganicAnn]

My mom and my aunt crashed a party. My mom and my dad at the party had a bet about who was oldest. My dad was a graduate student and a little older than most of the others at the party. My dad is older than my mom by 6 months and so he won the bet and got to take her out to dinner.

 

My ILs sat next to each other in High School their names were next to each other alphabetically.

[TanuvasaMama]

The crazy crazy truth...

 

When my parents were both 17 my mom's mother married my dad's grandfather.

 

so technically my mom is my dad's aunt. Yes, I live in bizarro-land.

[unsinkable]

These are all awesome stories!

 

Print them out or write them down for your kids!

[kalanamak]

When my grandmother jumped the fence, she landed in the middle of the dogs,

 

This sounds like a scene from a movie. Thanks for the image!

[LuvingLife]

My mom and dad met through friends and my mom didn't want to date my dad at all. She saud he tried to act cool and she didn't want that in a man. Here they are 17 years later, with 7 kids, funny how things work out!:001_smile:

[LostSurprise]

My inlaws went to high school together. They attended prom together and dated off and on. They married when FIL came home for Christmas from military duty. MIL was bored without him around.

 

My parents met at a factory. My dad and 2 of his siblings worked there. My mom saw he was always with another girl (his sister) so she mostly ignored him. Until he asked her out. He took her to a fair and convinced her to ride the tiltawhirl...where she vomited on his shoes. Afterward he dropped her off at a family party where he was dragged in by my great aunt and he had to meet the entire extended family with the faint and indistinct smell of vomit about him.

 

Maternal grandparents met when the car my grandmother was in (with her 2 girlfriends) broke down. My grandfather and his friend stopped to help them and followed them to the next town. My grandmother knew my grandfather's friend. They'd dated before, but she'd never met the tall (6'5"), lanky stranger. They dated for a few years, off and on. He proposed. She said no. She was Catholic. He was Lutheran. He went into the service. She worked and danced and traveled with her sisters. Eventually, after the war he proposed again and she said yes. He converted for her and they were married in the priest's office the same day Queen Elisabeth and Prince Philip married.

 

My paternal grandparents met when my grandmother was 16. She was walking down the street with a pair of skates over her shoulder. She and her younger sister were going skating. He asked her out. He was newly back from the war and in his mid20s. Needless to say her parents were less then thrilled. They eloped.

[kalanamak]

 

Maternal grandparents met when the car my grandmother was in (with her 2 girlfriends) broke down.

 

They dated for a few years, off and on. He proposed.

 

 

My paternal grandparents met when my grandmother was 16. Needless to say her parents were less then thrilled. They eloped.

 

So, which couple was better matched?

[LostSurprise]

My paternal grandparents divorced when my dad was in high school. Granted they were under a lot more pressure financially, emotionally then my maternal grandparents.

 

 

When I turned 16 my maternal grandmother took me aside and gave me a piece of advice (the only one she's ever given me). She told me to take my time and have fun when I was young. She said any man who really loved me would stick around through that.

 

And since she was the most together woman I knew I listened...sorta. :tongue_smilie: Not every guy will wait around like my grandpa did.

[missmoe]

My mom met my dad at her twin sister's wedding. He was the best man for the twin sister's husband. They've all been married a good 40 some years.

 

Getting married really "ruined" my mom and her sister's lives. They were both going to join the Navy. They got married instead!

 

My Inlaws met at college. Within a six weeks, my husband was conceived!:001_huh: It must have been love at first sight---they're still together 38 years later!

Edited November 29, 2010 by missmoe

[unsinkable]

Still reading, still loving these stories!

[katemary63]

My father was engaged to my mother's older sister (4 years older). My father was di-hard Catholic having spent 5 years in a Catholic boarding school and seminary. My aunt, di-hard Lutheran. (This was in Milwaukee, WI. The city was like half and half of each. The families were 1 generation off the boats.) So my aunt changed her mind and said she couldn't convert to Catholicism. They broke up. He started dating my mom and eventually asked her. She said yes and converted. Funny thing is, 7 years later, our whole family converted to Lutheran. Not so funny thing is my dad turned out to be a child abuser. (Seminary wasn't so good to him I think.) They divorced bitterly. I haven't seen him in 15 years.

 

My ILs met at age 18, picking cotton in Missouri. They each had taken a bus from their home towns to pick cotton for the summer. They met in the feilds and secretly got married a few weeks later. At the end of the summer, they each took their prospective buses home. About six months later, he drove to AR, threw a rock at her window in the middle of the night, picked her up and left. Her parents had no idea she was married or what happened to her. Six months after that, she brought him home for a visit. She introduced him as her husband and not a single question was ever asked. My MIL's father was the dirt poor, redneck, mountain hillybilly kind that sat on his porch drinking moonshine with a shotgun in his hand. You didn't come and call on his daughters or you'd get shot. Everyone of them, seven in all, just snuck off in the middle of the night. Some stereotypes are based in reality! Here's my proof. This picture is my MILs parents with their three oldest daughters. My MIL hadn't been born yet. Wow, right!

 

Edited November 30, 2010 by katemary63

[mommaduck]

I have no idea about my mama and daddy nor my in-laws, neither FIL/MIL nor FIL/SMIL. However, my stepdad and mama met when her car broke down on the side of the road and he came by and offered to help. She offered to cook him a steak dinner that he ended up cooking, because she was going to broil the steak.

[TXMomof4]

My parents met at college. Not so exciting.

 

My grandparents story is much better though. During WWII my grandmother moved to Dallas to work as a nurse. My granddad was a resident at the medical school and got sick. He was treated in the ER and they gave him some codiene and sent him upstairs with the nurse to get some sleep. Well - he's allergic to codiene and puked all over that cute little nurse in the elevator. The rest is history - they've been married 65 years now.