Julie + Dan

If you are reading this, you quite likely know the couple of the hour, Julie and Dan. Maybe you know just Julie, maybe you know just Dan, and maybe you have had the honor, as I have had, to know them together. However you know them, you certainly love them as much as I do.

To help us all celebrate the love we have for this dynamic duo, and the love they have for each other, they have asked me to write their love story.

Seeing as how I would give them the moon if I could, I am happy to oblige.

It is a story that I have heard fragments of over many pints of beer. I have heard it while watching their cat Cecil play with Julie’s various plants she kept on their patio in California. I have heard it over holiday dinners, massive platters of barbeque nachos, and numerous cups of coffee while strolling through a farmer’s market.

It is one I will never get tired of hearing.

As fond as I am of the unfiltered, giggly version, I thought it best to set the record straight on a couple cloudy parts of the saga before sharing it with all of you. Thus, I asked Julie and Dan to separately record their side of the story in as much detail as they were compelled to share. I have compiled the transcripts and will summarize what I can, but the best quotes will remain untouched.

And, trust me, there are plenty.

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With Cecil loudly meowing in the background, Julie’s recording begins.

J: Stop it, Cecil!

Julie’s wonderful friend, Saylor, began dating someone in Dan’s friend group, and she came home one day telling Julie about this really hot guy named Dan.

Julie was adamantly against the set up that Saylor had been so set on.

J: I was like “No way, do NOT introduce me - he is way out of my league. He is so cute, but like there is no way in hell he would ever date me.”

Saylor was persistent.

She insisted on this match, and, for about a year, Julie resisted. But Saylor, ever the opportunist, finally found a way to get these future lovebirds to meet; and that way was some good old fashioned trickery that is eerily similar to that of Shakespeare’s "Much Ado About Nothing."

Saylor invited Julie to go bowling with her and a couple of friends. Dan heard a very similar story from his friend, John, who, like Saylor, was careful to omit the entirety of the guest list.

The group agreed on eating dinner before going bowling, with Dan arriving last to the restaurant. It quickly became clear to Julie and Dan that they were to be each other’s date for the evening, both of them being encouraged to sit together and forced to bowl together.

This was much to Dan’s dismay, as he had recently gotten out of a relationship and needed a bit of time to himself.

J: It was really funny.

D: I wasn’t really interested in talking much at all.

J: He was being like a pouty little man and would not talk to me or give me the time of day.

D: I just remember not really saying a whole lot…

J: He was being a complete weirdo, being socially awkward and not talking to me.

D: I was pretty upset with my friends and in a roundabout way took it out on her.

J: I don’t blame him for being mad at his friends for tricking him into this.

D: I was not being really fair, not really nice - and that was the night.

After this clearly extraordinarily successful outing, they shockingly did not continue talking to or seeing each other. Every now and then, though, they would run into each other.

J: Clearly he hated me; he was so angry to have to bowl next to me.

D: …Socializing has never been my forte.

Enter Saylor, yet again.

Saylor’s birthday came around and everyone decided to go celebrate it with her on the iconic Dickson Street in Fayetteville, AR. This included Julie, who had an early morning, and Dan, who would quickly find himself to be having quite the change of heart.

D: I just remember at the first bar - I remember there was Julie again. Looking really cute, just, I don’t know, for some reason I particularly noticed her this time around.

J: So this time, all of a sudden, this cute guy, who I thought hated me, started talking to me.

D: She had mentioned her NASA internship, which piqued my interest.

J: Thank God for NASA, because he decided that was really cool and that I was worth talking to.

D: I just found myself really, really intrigued and kept asking questions. At one point, I decided at this first bar that I wanted to buy her a beer and keep talking, seeing as how I was taking up her time.

J: Obviously I thought he was really cute the whole time, so I let him buy me a beer.

D: …I’m sure she begrudgingly let me buy her that beer.

Enter Tanner, who swooped in to save Dan from his surely excruciating conversation with this random girl. Dan and Tanner had a longstanding tradition of getting each other out of awkward bar chats by letting the other one know that “the game is on.” Tanner was, according to Dan, not very good at this maneuver most of the time, but, on this particular night, he was really stepping up to the plate.

D: I had to be like “I don’t know what you’re talking about, man, shoo, shoo away.”

J: He was basically swatting Tanner away.

D: I don’t know what Tanner thought Julie was trying to do.

J: I can’t believe Tanner thought I was the one hitting on Dan - he was hitting on me.

After Tanner finally got the hint, Dan and Julie continued talking - all night. They are both very apologetic about just how much of the night they spent with each other.

J: Saylor is such a good friend, because I completely ignored her that whole night.

D: I don’t think Julie ever got the chance to talk to Saylor because I was talking to Julie that whole night. Now that I think of it, I don’t even know how I managed to hold a conversation that long, because I have never been, and maybe not now, that sociable… That was Signal #1: This girl is something special.

Despite knowing Julie had an early morning, he was doing everything in his power to not let her stop talking to him.

D: I just did not want her to leave.

There is a discrepancy on who asked whom for the other’s number first, but, regardless, they stayed in contact after Saylor’s birthday. Dan knew she would be caving with her cousin Jessica the next day, so he consulted with Tanner about the appropriate time to text her. Tanner advised him to play it cool and wait until Tuesday. Not too eager to hear about her weekend, but early enough to seem genuinely interested.

Smooth moves, Tanner. Real smooth.

So smooth was Tanner, in fact, that he suggested a ballroom dancing class for Dan and Julie’s first date. Both Dan and Julie agreed that it sounded fun and set the date quickly, though they were both nervous.

D: I was so nervous I cleaned out my car.

J: I remember being surprised at how clean his Rav-4 was!

D: Yeah… I just shoved everything in the back.

Neither Julie nor Dan were confident in their dancing abilities on this date.

J: …We were pretty bad.

D: I had such a clumsy foot - but it didn’t even matter.

J: It was really fun.

D: It was really, really fun to laugh at my mistakes with her.

After an hour or so of tripping over each other and laughing, they went out for ice cream.

J and D: We shut down the Braum’s on College Street.

D: …I don’t know how long the Braum’s had been closed when we left.

When they left, they began an entirely different kind of dance: the post-date drop-off.

J: He didn’t even pull in the driveway to drop me off - he stopped on the road.

D: She was probably thinking, “What’s wrong with this guy?”

J: I said, “I had a really nice time - I’d love to do this again.” He interpreted that as “I would love to do this exact same thing again.”

So the week after next they did the exact same thing with one difference: they got coffee, not ice cream.

J: I tease him about that all the time.

They began dating regularly, even after a first kiss they both deemed to be particularly awkward.

That did not matter much to either of them, though. They were into each other. Just like on Saylor’s birthday, Dan continued doing everything he could to keep Julie talking to him, even during his 3 month internship in Austin after only a few months of dating. They decided to make their relationship official with the full knowledge that theirs would be long distance, at least for a while.

J: I kind of asked him to be my boyfriend - I don’t know what was up with him; he was just not one to make the move.

D: That was really refreshing and really nice to hear, being with someone who was wanting to commit like that, too. This was Signal #2: I’ve got someone here who really wants to be with me.

Julie proved that time and time again while they were dating. For months and months, Dan worked horrible hours and lived in a condo with a lot of dead zones, but Dan would still call her every single night between 11pm and 1am.

At this point in their recordings, I could not help but grin at the smiles in their voices.

J: Every single night. He’d call every single night.

D: That was really nice of her… to stay up for me. That was Signal #3: She was there for me… She would always be there for me.

They have been there for each other ever since.

Now these recordings went a few different directions after the initial telling of how they met. I decided it would make the most sense to only include the stories of which I got both sides. But, it goes something like this.

Dan’s love story drifted toward nights full of family and chili. Julie’s drifted into windy camping trips and a little green tent by the lake. Some of the stories were incredibly detailed (I’m looking at you, Julie), and others were simple but incredibly sweet. Though their words were different, their meanings were the same: they love each other very, very much.

Their story does not end here - not by any stretch of the imagination. Maybe the story of how they fell in love ended in the Anza-Borrego desert under the glow of stars, New Year’s Eve fireworks, and the caving lamps on Julie and Dan’s foreheads as Dan got down on one knee. Maybe it ends with them relaxing by a picturesque lake in Zurich. Maybe it will end on June 25, 2022, with all their family and friends in attendance as they celebrate the ending of one story and the beginning of another.

Even then, I’m not so sure.

A love story as good as theirs is one that will never reach an end.