Twenty years. Twenty years ago today, Matt was jumping up and down at the altar, trying to see over our 195 guests in the pews,  while I walked down the aisle on my dad’s arm.  As I’ve said over the years, we’ve had an amazing life together. Read about that here. But for now, here’s the story of how we got started.

I like to joke that I picked up Matt on a cliff in Kentucky…

It was the summer of 2002, the summer I spent most of my weekends hanging out at Miguel’s at the Red River Gorge, hanging out with friends and climbing as much as I possibly could before real life set back in in the fall. This particular morning, I was meeting my friend Mike by his car to go climb somewhere for the day. When I got to the car, this guy was groggily getting up from the sleeping pad he’d slept on next to Mike’s car. As he stood up, I saw the gorgeous green-blue eyes, and the hot guy whose face they were in.  He was also there to meet Mike to climb for the day, and he’d driven down and arrived in the middle of the night, so he’d just slept next to the car out of convenience.  

We spent a lovely day climbing together, Matt climbing some hard shit and me following him on whatever I could, occasionally getting an infamous “power belay” to get to the top of some routes. At one point, Matt did this iron cross type move on a route that I still tease him about to this day. I tell him it was the cute chick on belay that he had to show off for that gave him that little extra that allowed him to send the route.

By afternoon, our friends had to get going, and neither Matt nor I were in a huge hurry to go anywhere. We both had fairly short drives home, and we were enjoying each other’s company. We went swimming at the local quarry swimming hole for a bit, then had dinner back at Miguel’s. Eventually, our time had to end and it was time to go home.

Driving home that night, my only thought was, “Oh shit, I just met my future husband. Oh shit. No. It’s too soon. I’m not ready. Shit…” Needless to say, I didn’t sleep that night. All I could think about was the cute boy with the gorgeous eyes….

The rest, as they say, is history. 

If you enjoyed this, and if you would like more stories from our early days, please leave a comment below. Thanks for reading!