An oral history of how we first met (and fell in love) by RJ & Caitlin

RJ: The early August evening I met Caitlin was sublimely preordained.  I would lock eyes with her for the first time later that night, but we had been in that sort of orbit for arguably our entire lives. I learned to foxtrot in the gym of the school where Caitlin's mother taught.

Caitlin: We even attended some of the same middle school dances, so we were likely dancing to Puff Daddy just mere feet from each other.  

RJ: But we had never met. Yet the relationships we found in the meantime made it (thankfully) inevitable.

My parents were in town that night, and as I dropped them back at their hotel, I found myself invited to a birthday party in Brooklyn. I knew the birthday girl through a college connection, and Caitlin knew the same person since high school.

Caitlin: I remember it was an incredibly hot night, and I met up with my friend Vicky for a pre-birthday party drink at a nearby bar. We caught up and then headed over to the party. I was excited about the night; Lindsey’s birthday parties were always a lot of fun. Little did I know then how life changing that particular one would be.

RJ: The Brooklyn venue was a popular outpost on the edge of Crown Heights. In the warm evening, most folks were gathering in the backyard of the place. The brick patio was littered with carob tree pods and Pabst pop tops, as hipster rock played one tick below the noise ordinance.

I saw Caitlin immediately, and just as quickly asked a partygoer if she was with us as well. Obviously enamored, and armed with the social connection ice breaker, I quickly found myself cornering poor Caitlin, and then quickly discovering how close a missed connection we, essentially always, were.

We later danced together at the party, which is probably for the best because my dance moves are about as embarrassing and uncool as physically possible. So they're good to get out of the way. But Caitlin was laughing along with me, and since then I've been hooked.

Caitlin: I want to get one thing straight: I love and have always loved RJ’s dance moves. At one point, I remember it was a whole group of us dancing, and then just the two of us. We were having so much fun together I didn’t even realize that most people had left. We have continued this trend of being the last two people on the dance floor throughout our relationship.

RJ: In a very 21st-century-love-story sort of way, my phone was dead at the end of the Brooklyn party evening, and I was panicked that I'd have no way to reach Caitlin ever again. She took my number though as we parted.

Caitlin: The next morning I recounted the story to my friend Alicia over bagels in Brooklyn before deciding I would wait the appropriate amount of time to text RJ. We went to the beach with the Barillas family and then as we drove back from Rockaway I texted RJ (after writing about 10 different versions of “Hey! It’s Caitlin”).

RJ: That next morning I was on the sunny patio of some nearby Upper West Side friends’ apartment, musing on the pretty girl I met and how I never knew if I'd hear from her again. But a most-fateful text later, and Caitlin and I had planned our first date in her cool Alphabet City neighborhood.

I personally think the East Village is the perfect kind of New York romantic. [Caitlin note: Couldn’t agree more] A bit of prufrockian longing wrapped in a buzz of punk music and social dissonance. Caitlin breezed into the nice cocktail bar we chose as our first date, with her cool Village look. I had come straight from work in discount khakis.

Caitlin: I remember thinking it was the most endearing thing ever when RJ asked me what I thought of said khakis :) I remember I also was late, which is fairly rare for me, which threw me off. I also was thrown off by how handsome RJ looked. I was nervous. So it’s nice to hear that RJ remembers me “breezing in.”

I remember laughing the entire night at RJ’s stories. And that I felt instantly so comfortable with him. He mentioned one of his favorite things to do was to wander the city and go for long walks, which is also one of my favorite things (and now, one of our favorite things). And I thought oh wow, I like this person an incredible amount. It was the best date of all time.

RJ: She was the best date I'd ever had, and we strolled the village all night as Caitlin took me to other village haunts, and we finished the night outside at a German beer hall we both knew. We like to look back and recall that it was not long after that our days apart essentially disappeared.

Caitlin: I think we’ve only gone literally two days total since knowing each other without communicating in some way.

RJ: And past first movie, and first "fancy" date, first "I love you's," we enthusiastically leaped into a life together, traveling the city, back home to Boston, and around the world, too.

Thanks to Vicky Wasik for the beautiful photos!