We asked family and friends to tell us how they met. Some have been together for a very long time (Jessie’s parents, Tim’s grandparents), others for less time—we never get tired of hearing these stories.

When I met my husband, Joe, thirty-two years ago, I thought he was everything I didn’t want in a guy. He was a friend of one of my college girlfriends, and one night a group of us, including Joe, had plans to go to the movies. At the appointed time, Joe showed up at my front door alone and said no one else could make it. I didn’t want to go, but I didn’t want to be rude either, so we went out. The night turned out to be wonderful. For the first time in my life I felt completely at ease with myself. Joe made me laugh endlessly. We couldn’t stop seeing each other after that. But every time we were together, I would say to myself, “What are you doing? This is not the type of guy you want to be with!” Six months after that first date, he asked me to marry him. I was the happiest girl on the earth. All these years later, he still makes me laugh. We are best friends, and I know we will always be there for each other. —Sarah Walsh, Jessie’s mom

Hugh and I met while we were in college. I was editor of the yearbook and he was a reporter on the newspaper. Our first date was on April 16, 1957. We went to the Cleveland Indians opening day baseball game. A month later we were engaged, and two months after that we were married. When it’s right, you know it! we will be married fifty-eight years in June 2015. We have four children and eight grandchildren together. Marriage is not always easy but when your interests and goals are the same, it is possible to work through the difficult times . . . that has always been true for us. —Ann Caywood Brown, Tim’s grandmother

Love at first sight? Dana and I had it, but it took a bit of time for us to share that important piece of information with each other. The first time I saw Dana, we were in my first college class. She had freshly dyed purple hair adorned with a set of broken headphones. I was smitten, but I didn’t have the courage to ask her out; I figured my luck with an art chick like her was slim. Six months later, and forty-five days before she graduated, I finally made the move and asked her out. She said, “Yes. What took you so long?” Turns out she had felt the same about me all along. The rest is history. The best things in life are always worth holding out the longest for. —Erik Marinovich

Julia appeared like sunshine in the night at The Park restaurant in New York City eleven years ago. I fell in love instantly. Julia moved to Germany two months later, so we thought it would be no more than a spring fling. But at around that time I had stopped drinking, and I was seeing the world anew. So I visited her in Berlin, and on my last day, we swore that we would stay together. She moved back to New York six months later. We moved in together. She moved out six months later. I moved in with her again a little while later, yet we separated once again. It was a tumultuous affair those first five years. We’ve been together without breakups for several years now, and we’ve learned that facts don’t mean much when it comes to love. What you build and how you care for this gift is all that matters. And of course LOVE—felt and expressed in strange ways sometimes—but love every second of these last eleven wonderful and crazy years. —Esteban Apraez

For several months before I met Nicole Jacek, I had been compiling a list of attributes and values of the kind of person I wanted to be with in a relationship on a chalkboard in my house in Los Angeles. At the time, I was on the board of the Art Directors Club (as was Nicole), and at one of their board meetings in New York, I finally got to meet Nicole. I was so nervous I made a silly comment about wishing I had hair like hers. At a lunch the next day, I was disappointed to find out she was straight, and more than a little annoyed that she had thought I was a “soccer mom.” But I couldn’t stop thinking about her. When we met for our first dinner out in LA, I quickly realized that the characteristics on my “relationship” list were embodied in the person sitting right across from me. After only four hours we decided to get married, and two months later we did it! —Noreen Morioka