#Metromance: ‘Inseparable ever since’

So …..

We met on King County Metro bus 121 from Des Moines to Seattle via Burien TC. It was sometime in mid-April 2012 when we first me met. I had been divorced a year ago and had just ended dating someone else a month ago. Michelle, it turns out, was in the process of finalizing her divorce.

I had started taking the 121 at 7:19 a.m. from Des Moines. The bus is kind of empty from Des Moines, and it’s the same people that ride the bus so you get to know the other riders pretty well and chat with some of them and even become friends with some of them! I already was friends with another lady who introduced me to Michelle one day.  I did not think much of it and a few days later just went and sat by her just to chat. I am, by nature, a friendly person who does not have a hard time starting a conversation with strangers, regardless of age or gender, and with Michelle it was no exception! We ended up talking the entire 45-minute ride into Seattle. It became quite the natural thing for me to get on the bus, sit with her and talk with her every day from then on. We had many fun and good conversations.

Little did I know she was checking me out.

I love to karaoke and do it almost every weekend. I invited her once to come and join me and I was pleasantly surprised that she said she would.

What surprised me even more is that on the weekend, she texted me to confirm I was still going and said she would meet me there. And she did! So we got to spend time outside of our bus commute.

By this time, it became a custom for us both to have coffee at an SBC by Westlake Center (that place, sadly, does not exist now).  I would walk her to work nearby and then walk to my work a mile away in downtown Seattle too. It was all strictly platonic; I did not let myself think too much of what the state of our “friendship” was. I just decided not to worry too much about it. And I was not going ruin it by asking if she liked me etc!!

Well, things came to a head the Friday before Memorial Day, a month later. While walking her to work, she confessed that she liked me and wanted me to know. I suddenly realized that I felt the same way, too, and after giving her a hug and a kiss on the cheek, we went for our first date that evening. We drove to Alki Beach and we walked for hours, kissed for the first time. I remember us stopping at a Denny’s in Burien for a late-night dessert, because we were not really that hungry!

We have been inseparable ever since!

We were married on June 27, 2016, four years and a month from the day we became a couple. We did it in style on board a cruise to Alaska with 30 of our family members and close friends in attendance.  We actually had a “121 bus friend” Jamie and her husband Carl join us! Such is the quality of friendships we have been blessed to cultivate aboard our bus!

June 2018 will mark six years of being together, two as husband and wife. Although we still live in Des Moines, we don’t ride the bus 121 any more since it is faster and more convenient to drive to the Angle Lake Station and take the Sound Transit Link.

We still joke about the fact that after several years of looking in vain for a “nice, Catholic gal” in the many single-Catholic groups around the Puget Sound, I finally found my Michelle aboard King County Metro bus number 121 out of Des Moines!! We are grateful to Metro for affording us the opportunity to “make the right connection” in more ways than one!!

-Roy & Michelle