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There I was doing it again, staring for the umpteenth time. My eyes couldn’t stop roving his way as he always—mystifyingly always!—listened attentively up there in the front row. He even wrote stuff down.

Today, which was true of most days, he was wearing a decidedly uncool pair of pants. But, then what did I know? The University of Colorado was a way-out sort of place, and I was from Austin. Minnesota, the Corn Belt, for Pete’s sake. Maybe army fatigues were what the truly trendy campus jocks wore.

(So, there you have it … exactly how my new life began. I, as well as all you married couples, have a story about how you met. Here is mine. It’s probably as unexpected and loony as yours …

My eyes (insubordinately bedeviling what was trying to be the student in me), moseyed in his direction for what was at least the tenth time that hour. They were out of my control, like metal globes kinetically drawn to the force of a well-muscled magnet. Well, I suppose he wasn’t what you’d exactly call Herculean chick-bait-brawny, but still there was something, an elusive distinction that I determined, if I persisted in my staring, to eventually decrypt.

Let’s see. It couldn’t be the abbreviated sandy hair, cut in a stiff crew-cut like a good quality shoe brush. No, no that hair was utterly unlike the CU swains who swaggered across campus. And it couldn’t be the absence of a fraternity pin. Rather it appeared he was a loner, not a joiner. (I wondered if he lived with his mom?) And certainly those socks were neither his nor anyone else’s admission ticket to the inner circle of the CU fashion cognoscenti!

Whoa! He sure had big feet! Also an easy smile that could have cared less that its confusion of overlapping teeth weren’t picket-fence-perfect. He also had that shadowed look of a man in need of a new squeeze … or for that matter, any squeeze at all.

Then one day quite unexpectedly, I made a discovery. It happened as I once again watched the object of my infatuation eagerly soak up like a tutorial sponge yet another piece of wisdom. Wisdom that was flying over my head because of his causing such a distraction. He was clearly basking in the glory of the information. That’s when I knew …. I knew …. that unlike the Joe six-pack fraternity jocks I’d become accustomed to, this guy in the front row possessed not only scholarship, but also maturity. Wow! Scholarship. Maturity. Now there were double novelties on a college campus.

Sitting in the row just behind him was a desperately quiet, reserved young woman who bore a striking resemblance to Marian the Librarian. She was utterly churchy and proper in a wholesome, shy, cardboard sort of way, with a perpetually ramrod straight back. She had a decent (though risky) fashion sense and her ankles were ever vigilantly crossed at the world’s tightest and most polished angle. I thought—no, I was certain—she was the ideal woman for “him” as he also appeared good, pious, and on the precarious fashion side. After all, he, as well as she, did have that lonely, hungry, morally upright look. I figured, too, that she didn’t care a whit about his unenchanting socks. Could it get any better than that, I asked myself? So, right then and there, I, Delilah Destiny, planned a chance meeting for the two.

This, naturally meant I’d first have to talk to not only one, but both of them. So, as class was finishing up one day, I—on a purposeful mission—casually meandered to the front of the room where I began a conversation with them. What I said was undoubtedly pretty inane, but it at least got them to look at each other. Marian raised her downcast eyes and really, really looked at him. The guy then, of all things, really really looked—at me!

To my surprise he bushwhacked my plans entirely. In the next few days, he glaringly snubbed Marian by moving from the front row back to where I sat. The heat was on and I could feel it. And he was really looking at me … and from a lot closer.

Still I was stalwart in my plans. I continued to extol what to me were the obvious virtues of Marian. Note her demure shyness, I reminded him, her refined deportment and her sterling character. Utterly squeaky clean, genteel and obviously unerringly good. Indeed, she was conspicuously virginal with just a dash of harnessed vixen. And whatever you do, I told him, do not overlook those scissored ankles. Even if he didn’t know it, I just knew that a girl like that could assuredly float his boat.

But, no matter how much embellishment I heaped upon Maid Marian, fate in the end would have its stubborn way. Within days it was I who latched onto Glen—right after I found out his name—plus finally deciding I wanted his laudable merits all for myself.

Thus, with this dating business being the competitive game that it was, I promptly declared a moratorium on Marian, the brazen tart! Back off, Library Lady, he’s mine! No matter how much she knew about the Dewey Decimal System, she was history. Yes, she and her clenched freckly, bony ankles … out! In the end, Marian was as unwanted as an eleventh toe.

I asked Glen if he would give me a ride downtown to pick up something I had ordered. I’m not sure that was a date, but we were both at least in the front seat together. The next day he invited me to see “The Bridge On the River Kwai.” I had already seen it three times, with three different dates, but without hesitation I replied, “You betcha!” That was a Minnesotans way of agreeing to just about anything.

On the third date, we discussed life and what we hoped to put into it and what we just as eagerly hoped to receive from it. The evening concluded with a rather loose-but-earnest proposal of marriage which I, just as loosely-but-earnestly, accepted.

In retrospect I realize that I knew his name was Glen, but I didn’t know his last name. I knew zero about his family and nothing about his background. What I did know was a solid assurance that this was the kind of man I wanted to share my life with. All those other facts were meaningless.

We’ve now been married for 64 ¼ years, proving that our hunches were right. We really were good for each other. In a nutshell, it’s been a glorious ride. And that, dear readers, is the rest of my story.