Today is a particularly special Sappy Love Story, as it comes from one of our very own–and our founder, no less! Callie Murray and her husband David recently celebrated their 10 year anniversary of being together (Starting way back in high school!). They now have two beautiful little daughters. Callie sat down and wrote out her story of the way she and her husband started dating. It’s an adorable story, and we couldn’t feel more blessed to share it with you.
photos by Kaitie Bryant Photography
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My best friend Callie and I had matching names, matching 97 Honda Accords and we were hoping that by the end of the summer, the one before our senior year of high school, that we would have matching boyfriends.
Callie had been a camp counselor at this summer day camp the year before, and after seeing how much she loved the job- and the guy she had met- I applied for the job myself. I remember asking her if there were any boys there for me and she told me about this one that I would think was really cute, David, but that he was just home for the summer from school in Texas and that he was a big flirt and that, ew, he wore cowboy boots.
I knew two things: #1. I didn’t want to waste my time just being a summer fling and #2. I wore Converse All-Stars. So I did the mature thing and I ignored him.
David, however, was both skilled and persistent in the Ways of the Flirt, and he put my determination to ignore to the test with suave moves like stealing my lunch or using the camp kids to ask if I liked him. It wasn’t until the end of the summer though that he made his big move, and on a Friday afternoon as we left camp to drive to a counselor retreat at the lake, he asked if he could follow me there. That was harmless enough, so I agreed, but the little weasel instead opened my car door and announced that he might as well save gas and hitch a ride.
So there I was shrugging my shoulders to my mom’s raised eyebrows as I brought this cute spikey-haired-blonde home to pack my bag for the retreat and there I was riding with him for two hours to the lake, learning that he wasn’t in fact from Texas and that he wasn’t even going back to school there in the fall, and there I was thinking that he was actually quite wonderful.
The retreat was full of jet-skis and pizzas and those goofy riddles you play where someone always feels left out, and as we were all laying on the dock that first night, my shoulder touching David’s, I made the comment that I was cold. David chivalrously offered me his gloves, yes the Dale Earnhart driving gloves all the guys had purchased at the grocery store on the way in, the ones they were all wearing with nothing else but their bathing suits, and I agreed. But the little weasel then told me we could share, so there we were with my right hand and his left crammed in this glove, fingers touching like we were seeing whose hand was bigger. He then bent his little fingers as much as there was room for and I felt that first butterfly because was he holding my hand?
The following week, the last week of camp, was deemed by Callie’s boyfriend to be The Week of All Good Things, and each night the counselors got together for something epic. There was the concert where David held my hand gloveless and in public, yelling across the emo screamer on stage, asking me out on our first official date. Then there was the night of putt-putt where we all dressed as old-school golfers with our plaid shorts and sweaters around our necks where David bought a plastic ring from the 25 cent machine and put it on my left hand. And then there was our first real date, where David took me to a picnic dinner in the neighborhood he grew up in, a bowling alley where we learned that bowling for two leaves little time for conversation as you’re just ever crossing paths to bowl, and to his friend’s expansive front yard where we watched the stars and our shoulders touched. Somewhere in the mix that night the little weasel told me that he wanted me to be his girlfriend and he brought me to meet his parents.
The Week of All Good Things ended with the ultimate Good Thing: Super Prom. Callie and I hung Christmas lights on her daddy’s dock at the lake and we burned hours worth of Etta James and Michael Jackson onto CDs and we donned our favorite formal attire as the group of counselors enjoyed a fancy dinner and dancing. We crowned Callie and her boyfriend Super Prom King and Queen and we laughed hysterically as Marvin Gaye crooned “Let’s Get it On” and as the sun started to rise over the water (yes, we literally danced until dawn) and as Norah Jones sang for probably the hundredth time, David kissed me.
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This month marks ten years since The Week of All Good Things, and since then Callie and I have stood next to each other in flowy dresses as those matching boyfriends become matching husbands and we’ve traded our matching Accords for matching family cars with more room for a growing number of carseats. David’s spikey-blond hair has been buzzed for a Navy enlistment and our cowboy boots and Converses have been shelved for running shoes, but David, my steadfast and dependable David, continues to love me with the persistence of a boy who would weasel his way into my car for a ride and with the confidence of a guy who would hold my hand under the watchful eyes of our friends and Dale Earnhardt, and he shows me that The Week of All Good Things was just a precursor for the Lifetime of All Good Things he offers me daily.
-Callie Murray
Callie and David at Super Prom
