Elise and I have been dating since Valentine’s Day, 2002 with no interruption. We are so evenly matched in every aspect from pastimes to taste in movies to scholastic aptitude – that it’s hard to believe that we were meant to wind up with anyone but each other.

Our relationship has been full of many stories, but today’s is actually about an earlier encounter. Our first, actually.

Half a year before we started dating, on Elise’s first or second day of college, the theatre produced two brief shows to introduce the program to incoming freshman. Elise, having performed and produced theatre in high school, attended with her roommate Kat.

I was in both shows, starring – however improbably – as the romantic lead in each. They were my last time acting onstage in college.

In one show I was moody and dark, but in the other show (a farce) my character was essentially me – effervescent, flamboyant, and terrible with women. Elise might have first seen me on stage, but the character she saw was me.

At some point in the evening – maybe during the show, or maybe after, I’ve never gotten it right when i tell this story – Elise leaned over to a friend and whispered, “If he’s not gay, I’ll marry him.”

A lot has ensued in the five years since that sentence but, so far as I know, it’s still true.

(For the record, I believe my first comment may have been, “I don’t know who’s cuter, her or her roommate,” which leads to other, even more amusing stories.)

It’s hard to believe that our relationship has now stretched to envelop the entirety of Elise’s collegiate career, and my entire professional life, and has followed us into our first (rented) house as adults, but that’s how time works.