How We Met

     Kim and I both grew up on farms.  They were 5 miles apart near the town of Ligonier in northern Indiana.  Kim is five years younger than me so we didn’t meet until after I had graduated from high school.  It is common in our community for kids to gather at a house with parents who love to have the kids around, and Kim and I met at just such a home.  After high school, I remained friends with two brothers who lived on a neighboring farm. Their parents were friendly and welcomed us young people.  I was free to open the door, walk in, get something out of the fridge and plop down in the living room and talk or watch TV with them. They wanted me to literally feel at home.  They also had a younger daughter. One night at their home, their daughter’s friend stopped in. It happened to be Kim.  

     My last name is Moser and Kim’s last name was also Moser.  There are two clans of Moser’s in Ligonier, so we aren’t related.  I was smitten by her and started making conversation with some great line like, “Hey, we Moser’s have to stick together.”  I liked her a lot, but didn’t think her parents would let her go out with me because I was 23 and she was a senior in high school.  Kim says that when we met I was older and she thought I was out of her league. She thought there were prettier girls out there than her (I’ll never understand her reasoning).  As a safe way to be around her and get to know her, I would take her and several of her girlfriends places. We once went bowling and I took 5 girls and me – all in the bench seat of my pickup.  Yep, real legal! Kim says she had no idea she was the one I was interested in when we went on these outings. 

     Still cautious about asking her on a date, I called one Sunday afternoon and asked if she would go with me to Quality Farm and Fleet to get a can of spray paint.  Just so you know, guys, if you want to impress a girl, invite her to go to a farm supply store (ok, it’s not really a good line, but it did work for me). My reasoning was that her parents probably wouldn’t let her go on a date with me because I was older, but they probably would let her go to a farm supply store on a Sunday afternoon.  When we got to the store, it was pouring rain and we sat in the truck and talked for 45 minutes. Afterward, we went to the farm so that I could do my chores. On our farm, we raised 10,000 hogs a year and we had just weaned some pigs and put them in a stacked deck, which means the floor was about 4 feet high. I showed Kim how she could put her finger in between the rungs of the gating and the 3-week-old pigs who had just been weaned from their moms would suckle her finger.  She loved it.

     Then we went down the road an eighth of a mile to a church where her parents were giving a Haiti missions presentation.  Taking her home after that, I was driving about 40 miles per hour and a car passed me. Kim smiled and said that after a date, her dad always asked how the guy drove.  She said that was her parents who had just passed us so I gave a good impression. I took her home and asked if she would like to go out again. She said, “I’d like that”.  I gave her a short kiss and I was on a cloud!

      We dated for a while, broke up in the spring, she graduated high school, we got back together, and she went to Purdue University in the fall.  We wrote letters (before email) every day and I called her as often as I could afford (back then we got charged for long-distance calling). At Thanksgiving, she came home and we told her parents we would like to get married.  They gave us their blessing and Kim’s dad said he would like to have her finish out the school year though.

     We got engaged at Christmas.  I remember driving to my parents’ house on New Year’s Day for my birthday party and thinking about us getting married.  I casually mentioned to Kim that I was $192,000 in debt . My brother and I had just bought out my dad’s equipment and half of the hog inventory, so it was all business debt.  I noticed Kim was quiet the rest of the day, but didn’t realize until she later told me that she was in shock and thought we’d never get out of debt.

     Kim finished her year of college and the following September we were married.  I remember waking up on September 12, 1981, and laying in bed thinking, “Wow, this is really happening!  Today is the day!”

A few interesting notes:

     Being a country bumpkin, I’d never been to Florida, so we went there on our honeymoon.  We flew in and took a shuttle to the Disney Hotel. The lady at the desk asked if we were newlyweds.  I said, “Is it that obvious”?  

     She answered yes and said that our travel agent should have asked for the honeymoon special – which gave us a king sized bed, a bottle of wine, and some hor d’oeuvres.  There was one available, so she gave us that upgrade.  We don’t happen to drink so we gave the wine to our housekeeper.

     Kim has always looked young.  We married at 19 and 24, but Kim looked more like she was 16.  One of our favorite happenings would be when a salesman would come to the door of our farmhouse and ask Kim if her father was home.  Kim would say, “No, but my husband is.”

     We farmed till I was 31; then we left and I studied to be a pastor.  Our children’s ages were 3 months, 2 and 4 when we left the farm.

We match our blog topics on our YouTube channel.  We had fun shooting the video for this, and you can check it out here.