In honor of our 12th anniversary, I would like to post my favorite love story--ours. It's kind of long, but this blog is also our family history. I'm not sure if I've ever written all this down anywhere else besides journal entries and letters. So here goes.
Ben and I met sometime in our teenage years. We attended the same church building (but different wards), and we went to the same junior high and high school. My first real memory of Ben happened during his performance in "The Crucible" his sophomore year of high school. I had many other friends in the play, as well. Ben walked onto the stage, taking possession of it immediately with his dramatic flair. I felt a thrill and looked into my program, reading the name "Ben Kendrick." I remember thinking something like, "So that's Ben Kendrick." Perhaps my friends had spoken of him a lot, I don't know for sure.
During high school, we were both highly involved in the dramatic arts. Between the two of us, we were on stage in every single production at Bountiful High during our two years together, but we were never on stage in the same one. (I was on stage and he was in the orchestra pit for "Fiddler on the Roof.") I was always intrigued by Ben and wanted to get to know him better. I would not go so far as to say I had a crush on him. There are a few other memories of him, but not many. We did dance once together during a stomp (an informal dance). I think he was one of the few boys who ever asked me to dance at a stomp.
I graduated and went off to college. After my sophomore year of college, I came home for what looked like a very lonely summer. All the guys I had hung out with in high school were on missions. I hadn't been close to many girls in high school, and my best friend was pregnant and, quite frankly, a little psycho with hormones. In desperation one evening, I called another girl from the grade behind me with whom I had spent some time. We started hanging out. One night she said it was the final party before his mission for one of our drama friends, so I went with her.
Ben was there. Ben loved to organize parties and activities with all his friends. When he saw me, the first thing he thought was, "Oh, that's right. Robin's back from college. I should invite her to do stuff with us." This is kind of funny because as I said, we hadn't really interacted much before. I was profoundly grateful, though, as Ben swept me into his group of friends. Soon afterward, he received his mission call. We were both shameless flirts in our single days, and we soon started flirting more with each other than anyone else. I would arrive at parties early and leave late because I wanted to spend more time with him. It was only a matter of time before our friends started to tease us mercilessly. We maintained a fiction of distance for a couple of months. Ben's official position was that he did not want a girlfriend while he was on his mission.
One night Ben called and said his parents were kicking him out for dinner because they had company. I invited him to my house. "Actually," he said, "I was thinking we might go out." I felt a little silly for my invitation! We went to The Old Spaghetti Factory on our first date. We went on a couple more dates, but we still denied any relationship.
Ben used to host (and we hope to do it again when kids are a little older) an annual Star Trek Party where they would watch all the Star Trek movies in a row. This was usually done in January, but he wanted to host one more before his mission. He was leaving in mid-October. I was leaving for college at the end of September. The Star Trek Party was on September 28, 1996. Ben and I spent a lot of time next to each other, but the rule was that everyone had to be under their own blanket! For lunch, we ordered Chinese food. We started telling stories of fortune cookies that we had received. I mentioned that I had received a cookie some time before that read: "You or a close friend will be married within a year." I said that it must have referred to one of my friends from college because I was not getting married anytime soon. Someone teased that it might still be me, to which I promptly retorted, "It can't be me--I'm dating a pre-missionary!"
We received a standing ovation for that Freudian slip. Ben turned red, I turned purple, but there was no going back. I left for college on Monday. The payphones had a special at the time that you could talk anywhere in Utah for as long as you wanted for $1. Ben and I spent hours on the phone, and I came home all 3 weekends before he went on his mission. During General Conference, we were sitting on the lawn outside the Tabernacle. I had my head in his lap, and he leaned down to kiss my nose. I inadvertently moved, and our lips brushed. So admitting we were dating was an accident, and so was our first kiss!
Ben went on his mission. I dated and flirted some, but no one could hold a candle to him and the bond that we already shared. It really amazed me how quickly and deeply it had developed. We wrote letters, of course. Six months to the day after he went into the MTC on his way to Chile, I entered the MTC on my way to France. We continued to write. We planned nothing, although we both knew that the math was definitely on our side! He changed missions, which changed his release date. I returned home in October of 1998. He returned the first week of November. I thought that was kind of rotten that he was never home without me. If he hadn't changed missions, we would have come home within 12 hours of each other. Convenient, eh?
The next two months were fairly traditional. We spent all the time together that we could. Still in denial, we elected not to attend each others' family Christmas parties. This elicited much laughter and eye-rolling from our relatives.
I returned to college in early January. Ben realized he just couldn't live without me. ;) That next weekend, I returned home. My girlfriends convinced me to go ring shopping with them so they could help guide him IF we got engaged. That evening, we watched a movie at Ben's house with lots of friends. Time passed, and everyone left except our married friends, the Hoffmans. Cami and I were talking in my car, and Isaac and Ben were talking outside. I don't remember much of my conversation with Cami, but here is what Ben says to me about his conversation with Isaac:
"I don't really remember how it started, but Isaac directed the conversation toward marriage and exactly where I was going with the relationship with you. I said point blank, 'If I ask her to marry me, I know what the answer will be. I'm just not positive that I'm ready yet.' " He also says that Cami had gotten me to admit that I wanted him to ask me to marry him. "Essentially, they were pushing."
They left, and Ben got in the car to talk to me. In our conversation, we seriously discussed marriage for the first time ever. We also talked about how we thought the "engagement process" was stupid and that if we were to be engaged, we should be officially engaged. We even tentatively discussed possible dates, but the momentous question had not been asked. As the conversation was about to drift into other topics, Ben took me by the hands and asked me to marry him. Of course I said yes!
It was not completely by accident, but it was rather spontaneous. Our parents were happy with our choice of companion. I went back to college, but I returned home every weekend. Ben often drove up to Logan to get me on Friday and drove me back on Sunday night. During the spring, after he had managed to get some money, he gave me a diamond ring and proposed officially, driving up to Logan to surprise me.
After a courtship of nearly three years, we were married on May 27, 1999 in the Bountiful Temple. During our courtship, we were actually living in the same city for about 2 months and lots of weekends. I worried about that a little at the time, but we have been unbelievably happy with each other ever since. We have our trials and struggles in life, but our relationship is not one of them. We often say we wish every one could be as happy as us!
