Chelle and Jamie fist met on June 27, 1994 at Ivanhoe’s.  Jamie has just graduated from Blackford High School and Chelle has just got her license.  Who knew what was to come for these two?  You would never think that two people could fall in love while handling raw chicken and having, “Taco!” and “Go on now!” yelled at you.  (I guess you’d have to be there to know.)  Chelle had her first encounter with Jamie when she learned that he would be “training” her on how to make salads one night.  She said hi to him and thought he was awfully cute, until he smiled.  Chelle had a thing for nice smiles, and Jamie’s wasn’t.  Suddenly that desire to date him was quelled.  Nonetheless, Chelle had to listen to him as he was the self-proclaimed salad king.  Jamie told Chelle to just stand back and watch.  She could get the bowls out for him, but he would do the rest.  She liked him even less.  Not only was he unattractive now, but he was also an @$$hole!  Chelle managed to survive the night and tolerated him.  Jamie was known for being the mack around Ivanhoe’s, and he had tried to date most of the girls that worked there.  Secretly, Chelle was kind of bummed that Jamie hadn’t tried to  ask her out. 

Chelle eventually started dating another Hoe (what people who work at Ivanhoe’s call each other), Jason.  He happened to be friends with Jamie, but that wasn’t why Chelle was going out with him.  The dated a few weeks, and called it quits.  As Chelle was leaving Ivanhoe’s one night, she heard Jamie say something to Jason to the order of he needed to tell me.  (Chelle still doesn’t know what that’s about to this day.)  A month or so later, Chelle and her friend, Jess, were at the fair.  They saw Jamie and another friend of his, Sivart, hanging out and the girls decided to mess with the guys.  They went and sat down on a bench, and the guys were on one side, the girls on the other.  Being typical teenage boys, they started throwing pebbles at the girls.  Of course they laughed their butts off when the rocks went down the girl’s shirt.  A day later, Chelle worked and as she was leaving, Jamie said, “See ya later, Rocky.”  Chelle responded, “See ya later, Bullwinkle.”  That’s when they knew it was love.  Okay maybe not yet.

Jess, Sivart, Jamie, and Chelle went out as a foursome one night.  The girls both were after Sivart.  For being a goofball, he was hot!  They decided that they would go to Red Lobster.  That’s where the fun began.  Sivart being the worldly man that he isn’t, ordered the Sea Farer meal, except he pronounced it Sea Far-er.  Everyone laughed at him.  He didn’t get it.  Dinner went well, and afterwards, the girls decided that they wanted to go to the park to swing on the swings.  They went to the park and played for an hour and left back to Jess’ dad’s house, since he was gone for the night.  The girls thought they would be cute and start to give the guy’s massages.  The guy’s seemed to be really getting into it, so the Chelle and Jess thought it would be funny to go over to the freezer and get ice cubes out.  They put the cubes on the guy’s backs, and instead of freaking the guys out, they loved it.  The boys were putty in the girls’ hands.  Or maybe they were experiencing blood rush to their groin, thus rendering them “harmless” for the moment.  After an hour of this, the girls’ hand hurt and they were tired.  Jamie walked Chelle outside, since Jess had already sank her fangs in Sivart and staked her claim, and told her that he had a really good evening.  Surprisingly, Chelle did, too.  She didn’t have a clue how fun Jamie really was.  They had a lot in common.  Little did they know…

A few weeks later, Jamie’s 19^th birthday was coming up.  He had told Chelle that he really liked the Eagles, so Chelle thought she would get him the Eagles Greatest Hits that had recently came out.  She found out that he liked Choco Buttons instead of M & M’s, too.  Chelle couldn’t find any plain ones, like he liked, so she got him some peanut ones instead.  It about bowled him over when she got this for him.  She had told him that she was going to take him to dinner for his birthday, too.  Jamie drove, and ended up paying for dinner instead.  They came back to the park and danced by the headlights of his truck to his new Eagles cd.  “Love Will Keep Us Alive” was playing as they danced.  It felt so good to finally be comfortable around a guy without any expectations.  Jamie drove Chelle back to her car, and as they were talking, he got out the pop tab that she had recently gave him to claim his kiss that the pop tab granted.  Chelle obliged.  That was the first of many kisses.  They started dating officially two weeks later.  The date was August 30, 1995.