The greatest story I’ve ever told

The story always kills, so I’ll tell the story.

It was early 2000, and my workplace outside Albany, New York, had added to its coverage area, which would have required me to often be in two places at once.

Needless to say, I can’t do that, so I put a classified ad in the paper looking for someone to help out on a freelance basis.

I got one resume — from a woman named Suzi.

She was able to do what we needed, and so she worked for me for the next six months or so. She was good.

We never met, not even once, during that time. I’d either call her or email her to tell her what I needed her to do, and we also would frequently chat over Instant Messenger on AOL. (Remember when that was a thing people did before texting?)

Based on her resume, we figured out at work that she and I were probably about the same age, and one of my coworkers kept encouraging me to ask her out. I figured that wouldn’t go anywhere, since if she wasn’t home when I called, a guy’s voice was on her answering machine, so I assumed she had a husband or boyfriend.

Come late August, I was going to be working elsewhere, so I called Suzi to tell her that I’d have her doing some different things for the next few weeks, so she’d be able to help whoever replaced me.

I got through about a sentence, since she had news for me — she was moving back home to Connecticut Labor Day weekend.

So much for that.

So Labor Day weekend comes and goes, and that Monday night, I saw she was online, so in the spirit of being friendly, I asked her how the move went.

We wound up chatting online for hours.

And then we did it again the next night.

And the next night.

Yeah, it was pretty obvious we liked each other, so that Thursday, we talked on the phone.

As we did, we both talked about how we’d actually like to meet in person. I’m more of a hem-and-haw, “Wouldn’t that be a nice idea?” kind of guy, but she’s much more direct.

Which is how she wound up saying, “I get out of work tomorrow at 5. I can be in Albany by 7:30.”

And she was. We went to dinner at Crossgates Mall, where she was exposed to my nervous babbling and my bad jokes. Amazingly enough, while she did go back home to Connecticut, she didn’t do so vowing to never set foot in New York until she could be sure I was gone.

(In case you were wondering, she’s one day short of four months older than me, and the male voice on her answering machine was her father.)

We’ve been together ever since.

Today is our 16th wedding anniversary.

The story continues.

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