Meeting Eddie

Early picture of the 2 of us, Eddie & Ed, in 2003.

I met the man that was to be my husband 13 years ago on June 7th.  He responded to a posting I had placed on Yahoo Personals looking for a buddy. We corresponded back and forth several times online over a period of several days. Finally we decided we would meet in person over lunch in downtown Palo Alto. I was working at Stanford University and was somewhat familiar with Palo Alto although at this point I almost never left the campus during the day to go downtown.  Eddie lived in Palo Alto. He suggested we meet in front of The Old Pro restaurant on Ramona Street.

I set out for lunch that day thinking I had plenty of time. However, I soon learned that parking is a bitch downtown. (And it still is.) I am now walking double time from the parking lot to the restaurant in order to get there in time. I don’t want to be late. I don’t want Eddie to think I was one of those flaky people that are never on time or worse that I wasn’t going to show.

We didn’t know what each other looked like at this point. All our writing back and forth was with email. In the early years of 2000, most people didn’t have digital pictures to exchange. Camera phones would not be popular for a couple more years. All I knew of his appearance was that he was tall and trim. I told him I would be wearing a plaid shirt and glasses.

I nervously stood outside the restaurant waiting and hoping that I wasn’t going to be stood up. Within a minute or so, I felt a tap on my shoulder. I turned around toward the person and looked up. There, silhouetted against the sun, was Eddie. A shiver ran down my spine. He was good looking with a sexy vibe to him. I felt this was going to be an interesting lunch.

We went inside and got a table in the back. We ordered sandwiches off the menu and proceeded to talk for over an hour. I became totally enchanted by this man. My stomach was tense. I had goosebumps on the back of my arms. The little voice in my head was chanting, “don’t screw this up; don’t screw this up; don’t screw this up.”

We talked of our passion of theatre. I had worked as a theatre arts administrator for almost 20 years. He had recently finished a term as the board chair of a major regional theatre company.  We had a lot of mutual interest in the arts.

We both loved running and made plans to run the hills on the backside of the Stanford campus, aka the Dish. We both liked biking and hiking with Eddie having done many over the top adventure travel vacations associated with these endeavors. This was the start of many future plans.

After lunch we continued our meeting at his office. I was totally blown away by this guy. He was everything I was looking for in a best friend and lover. Our first meeting was followed up with lots of back and forth emails. We started running together at lunch and doing bike rides on the weekends. At the end of four months we came out together, left our wives and moved in together. A whole new chapter of lives opened up.