It all started on February 11

Jennifer read Keith's profile online at OKCupid.com, and she smiled when she read the way he finished the sentence, "I spend a lot of time thinking about...." Keith said:

"I spend a lot of time thinking about how come everytime I go to buy gas for my car that it seems like barrels of crude oil are trading at a new record high the day before!"

Jennifer started it all when she wrote Keith a message just before midnight on February 11:

"I thought your comment about your suspicion of crude oil prices was funny. Your profile makes you sound like someone I might like to get to know. I guess this means you get to decide if you'll read my profile and tell me if you want to talk more."

And the rest, as they say, is history!

OK, we can do better than that.

Keith wrote back. In fact, we exchanged nearly ten messages before a week was up. By then, we had plans to meet for dinner for the first time.

Wednesday night became date night, and we met at Chili's and then twice at Joshua Cup coffee house in Macon. Between Wednesdays, we were talking on the phone every night, and we emailed some, too.

We learned that our paths had been intersecting for years, but we were never in the same place at the same time. Keith started working at Mercer in the same summer that Jennifer worked on campus. He also worked on the apartment complex landscape where Jennifer lived across town the next fall. Keith drove through Columbus when he went to his grandmother's house, and Jennifer visited Columbus a lot to see her mom. We talked about the landmarks we could see along the highway through Columbus. Since Keith's twin lives in Miami and Jennifer lived in West Palm Beach, Florida for a few years, we could talk about those paths as well.

We have lots in common, but we were learning about our differences, too. Keith doesn't use punctuation when he writes emails, but Jennifer wouldn't dream of life with no periods, commas, or capital letters! Keith can talk for hours about history, English, and plants, and Jennifer is clueless about all of those areas! Jennifer enjoyed studying math and theology, but Keith simply says he was good at math but didn't like it. Keith's parents are married, and Jennifer's parents are divorced. Keith is the youngest of the family, and Jennifer is the oldest. Keith seems to always have money, but he never keeps track of where he spends money. Meanwhile, Jennifer tracks every penny she earns and spends, and she rarely spends without weighing the decision carefully.

Even though we appear to be different in many ways, we learned that we really do start with similar commitments. Those priorities simply play out differently for us. For example, the differences in our writing styles are not as important as our commitment to be effective communicators. We want to know and be known, and we are convinced that there is power in words. We study different disciplines, but we are both deeply committed to education and other intellectual pursuits. Our friends tell us that they won't play against us in Trivial Pursuit! We are both academics in many ways, and we appreciate the knowledge that sits across the table each day. Even though our parents' marriages took different paths, we are both deeply committed to working hard in our married lives (those two dreams became one dream when we figured out that we'd be married to each other!). Our relationships with money are different, but we share the commitment to spend only money that we have with few exceptions like cars and houses.

With complementing personalities and commitments, we were free to imagine more and more days together. In future posts, you can read about our favorite dates and other big steps along the way.