King County Metromance: Love, buses and college

Ten years ago, Taniya Lake had little time for dating, thank you very much. She was a high school senior, enrolled in the Running Start program at Green River Community College, busy with homework for her courses there and at Auburn Mountain View High School. Not to mention all her volunteering and senior year activities.

Even so, it was a bummer she seldom got to talk to that cute guy she met the first day of class at her King County Metro bus stop at the college, because he was usually getting on the bus as she got off.

That first day they met, they did chat for a while: “He had told me he was going to college fulltime there to get his AA before going to the University of Washington,” she recalled. His name was Kai.

Following that first meeting, the two continually saw each other at the bus stop. “We’d say an awkward ‘Hi,’” Taniya said. “I was like, He’s here all time, but I’m not sure how to proceed.”

Finally, fate took a hand and gave the two a firm shove: For once, they got on the same bus.

“The bus comes, I enter, and a couple seconds later he enters,” she recalled. “He walks past me, then comes back and sits with me and says, ‘I feel like the universe keeps bringing us back together.’ I told him that was for sure.”

They started seeing each other every day at the bus stop, pausing for moment to say hi. That progressed to Kai tailoring the time he took classes to the same time Taniya was on campus for class, too.

Taniya and Kai finally started to date, and it was always at same place, on the bus.

“The moments we spent on the bus together was all the time we really had,” Taniya said. “I was a high school student anyway, and didn’t have money for fancy dates.”

At the end of her senior year, Kai put together a scavenger hunt to ask her to her prom. “One of the clues said, ‘Go to the place to where we really took a chance to make this happen.’ I knew it must be the bus stop where we met.”

Their relationship was (and is!) the real deal. Taniya and Kai have now been married six years. He works as an elementary school physical education teacher. And Taniya? Well, we’re happy to report she joined Metro, and works as an administrator for Finance and Administration.

“I told them when I interviewed, ‘I met my spouse through Metro, so I feel I need to be here,’” she said, laughing.