Writing a Love Story

Charina Urban
Nov 5, 2016
2 min read

This morning our alma mater hosted homecoming and invited all alumni back to campus for breakfast. As my husband and I walked around the campus with our son, I found myself thinking back to my time there. I was reminded of all the friends I made, the classes I skipped, the club events I attended, and the moment I met my then-future-husband for the first time.

The simple short and sweet version, is that we met on Oklahoma Christian's campus my sophomore and his senior year. Fast forward two years and I graduated with a Bachelor's in Science and an MRS degree. The more fun and not-so-short version is a bit more like a 'How I Met Your Mother' story. In fact, that's kind of how our's began.

At the start of my freshman year, a large group of us Northwest kids gathered together to take a picture for a promo our university wanted. Will (who is from Texas) snuck into the photo and stood about 5 feet from me.

A year later I went to a rush event being hosted by a club I was interested in and one of the men's clubs. It was a 90's karaoke event. I wore a jumper and Will belted out a Backstreet Boys number.

That November I went with one of my guy friends to a club event at a trampoline park. While I was on the not-so-crazy-high side of the park, Will was dunking baskets just a few bounce mats over.

A bunch of my friends ended up in the same club as Will that fall, so I began to know of him. He was the really tall good-looking guy who literally stood above a crowd. During Christmas break we ended up having a random conversation on FB about a picture I had posted of a Christmas light park. Since we'd never actually met, just knew of each other I didn't really think much of it.

But then we kept talking. We talked about music, holiday traditions, family, and TV shows. His favorite was 'How I Met Your Mother'. I'd never seen it before, but I was hooked after just a few episodes. (PSA: If you haven't seen HIMYM you NEED to. All 9 seasons can be found on Netflix)

When we got back to school in January one of the first things we did was officially meet each other. We went to coffee, talked for several hours, and the rest as they say, is history.

So I like to think that OC, Christmas, and HIMYM all had a role in writing the prologue to our story. In fact, we got engaged on campus, included a yellow umbrella in our engagement and wedding photos, and my gift to him on our wedding day was a blue french horn.

And now, here we are four years later walking around the place that pushed us together with our perfect baby boy. We are living out the best chapter of our story so far. I can't wait to see what else gets written, but for now, in this moment, I'm simply thankful for this campus and the sweet sitcom that helped start it all.