How We Met & Got Married Within 8 Months!

Mixing business with pleasure
It was 1998. Both of us were living & working in Florida at the time. Lynnette was working for the University of Central Florida in Orlando, and Jim was working for Paramount Miller Graphics in Jacksonville.

Each of our companies shared a mutual client by the name of Knight Images, and that client had a Holiday Party for all of their business friends in December of 1998. Jim and Lynnette were both in attendance.

Lynnette spent most of the evening with her UCF co-worker, Darla while Jim had invited his brother, Steve (from out of town) to join him. After the party had moved from the Knight Images office building to Rosie O'Grady's Irish Pub just down the street, the fun really began!

Before long, Jim's brother started up a "friendly" conversation with Lynnette while Jim was talking to other clients. Realizing this, Jim quickly stepped in to "rescue" Lynnette and their first conversation was begun.

Having just returned from a cruise to the Virgin Islands, Lynnette was sharing her exciting stories about "snuba"-diving (where you don't have to be licensed, and you're tethered to an air tank floating 50 feet above you) and traveling to The Keys. Jim was commenting on all the materials he'd printed about scuba diving, as well as some of his recent travels.

Lynnette's first sign that Jim was a "perfect gentleman" was when he offered to walk blocks away from the party (late at night when everything was closed) just to fetch her a piece of gum. We've always viewed that exchange of Big Red chewing gum as our first step toward a friendship. (...and Big Red has been our favorite ever since!)

Getting to know each other
From there, our communications took place via e-mail, since we lived 1-1/2 hours away from each other. But Jim started making more and more business appointments in the Orlando area, and we met for the first time "on our own" after work at a pizza place on Church Street downtown Orlando. (Neither of us saw this as a "date", it was more like a professional after-hours business meeting.)

Still seeing nothing more than a professional relationship at this point, the e-mails continued. But they started to get longer, and funnier. By now, we were each completely intrigued by the other, and we became moderately interested in where this might lead...

Our first real "date" soon followed. What started out as an after-work little get together turned into dinner and a very late night at a Rio Bravo Mexican Restaurant (...which, incidentally, ended with our first kiss). This was the point that we realized we share very similar beliefs and experiences, and we started to get caught up in the intrigue and mystery of where this all might lead...
(...might also explain why we still have such a fondness for Mexican food!)

From here, it all went so fast...
We spent Valentine's Day together (which, by the way, was the first time Jim said "those 3 little words"... Lynnette was overheard uttering those same words on their first Blue Moon/camping trip), and then went to the Florida State Fair, and Lynnette was excited to introduce Jim to her dad when he was in town visiting. (She's never felt the urge to introduce any of her dates to either of her parents before... a "sign" perhaps?)

And, coincidentally, Lynnette's childhood friend, Suzie, was in Orlando visiting, giving her the opportunity to also meet Jim. (Since Lynnette rarely shared such personal information as dates and love-life with her friends OR family in the past... how unusual that two of the primary people in her life had officially met this one?!)

Soon we were talking about how our careers had hit a wall and lacked the "challenge" that once drove us, and how we were both itching for something completely "different". So... we dove in head-first!

In search of a new challenge
Jim had been asked to move to Pensacola, Florida for a job at Gannett Offset. He'd turned it down before, because the timing wasn't quite right to pick up and move. But now he started to entertain the idea again. Lynnette was all for it, and thought it was just the "new start" she'd been longing for. (Everyone knows that Lynnette firmly believes in the saying, "Change is good" and she's always looking for an opportunity to mix things up and try new things...)

So we drove to Pensacola one weekend to check things out. Fell in love with the place, because it was sooooo different -- a true "beach community". Just perfect in more ways than we could count.

A few weeks later, we drove to Pensacola again to explore where we might want to live.

Then, a few weeks later, we started one of many long-standing traditions, where we drew our dreams in the sand. After which, we each gave our respective employers nearly a month's notice that we'd be moving. It was just 3 months after we started dating that we moved in together and began our lives in Pensacola, Florida.

And so it goes...
Such is the story of our whirlwind romance, which ended up in marriage -- all in the course of 10 short months!

Truth is, neither of us was looking for a relationship at the time...