Girl, I asked him

March 22, 2019 9:30 PM

A Couple That Got Married After 2 Weeks On How It Went Down: "This is about to be a buncha laughs. Just so you know, we’re a very unique couple."
posted by carolr (50 comments total)

i'm not crying, it's just dusty in here!

(and i'm typically not a fan of podcasts/audio, but i'd LOVE an audio version of this, because it's such an amazing read!!)
posted by raihan_ at 9:46 PM on March 22, 2019 [1 favorite]

WOW.

That was utterly fabulous.

I love to see people in love.

Thank you for posting it!
posted by kristi at 10:26 PM on March 22, 2019 [4 favorites]

The billion fragments of reality that had to perfectly align for their union to take shape - how beautiful.
posted by Foci for Analysis at 10:34 PM on March 22, 2019 [10 favorites]

wow, that is great. I met my wife on July 16, 1993. We went on our first date July 18, 1993. She stayed at my place for the next couple days and then I went with her to her place over in West Seattle to find a note from the cops informing her that her mom had asked them to find out why she was not answering her phone. I don't think we slept apart at all between then and our wedding on July 18, 1998. Since then there have been a couple trips that had to be solo. Figuring out what the count is on our anniversary is tricky. I will count this upcoming anniversary as our 26th.
posted by mwhybark at 10:39 PM on March 22, 2019 [46 favorites]

I love this! They are a total delight, and this makes me SO happy. We spend so much time telling people to be cautious and not make gut decisions and whatever but - the heart wants what it wants man, and sometimes it recognizes that in a way I can only describe as magic. The more I live the more I see that. I hope I run into them around NY someday.
posted by colorblock sock at 10:56 PM on March 22, 2019 [9 favorites]

Yeah, this is is so rad I had to stop reading so I could parcel it out bit by bit when I need to feel good about something. And in my ex-neighborhood! I miss 1996 east village so goddamn much.
posted by BigBrooklyn at 11:15 PM on March 22, 2019 [3 favorites]

I couldn't sleep so I checked in with the Blue. This made my night (day). Thanks for posting, carolr!
posted by Mike Mongo at 2:16 AM on March 23, 2019 [3 favorites]

Back in 1990, I had a baby.

Jyll told me if I didn’t get a job, if I didn’t come home with some money, she was going to leave me.

This is a strong article about an amazing whirlwind romance and love at first sight, but oh, how these moments just slide by with so little note. Everything is surely smooth now that it's in the past and they are over the rough bits but oh, oh, oh, what it must have been then.
posted by Going To Maine at 2:28 AM on March 23, 2019 [28 favorites]

My mother and stepfather went from first meeting to married in less than three months.

They’ve been together without relationship drama (yes, really) for over forty years.
posted by D.C. at 4:01 AM on March 23, 2019 [6 favorites]

Yeah well - I dated my husband for seven years before we got married! Still sniffling. A great story.
posted by 41swans at 4:09 AM on March 23, 2019 [3 favorites]

This story made me smile so big. Thanks for posting it.

I first met Mr. eirias when I followed a friend into her freshman physics class and he was sitting in the row behind us. I thought he was terribly cute, but I was dating someone else at the time. Then I first met him again five years later. We had run into each other at a concert in the town we’d both moved to, I’d recognized him, and he sat next to me; he was at the end of the row and did that thing where you stretch your legs out ostentatiously, teasing the cramped people next to you a little bit, and I thought, out of nowhere -- I’m going to marry that guy. We were far too cautious to move anything like that quickly, we did the proper GenX thing of first practically living together, then officially living together, THEN getting married, but sixteen years later, here we are.
posted by eirias at 4:12 AM on March 23, 2019 [6 favorites]

And here I thought our one year was fast.

I remember I came home, I was like, “Motherfucker, you better come home with some motherfucking money, or I’m out.”

That's love. Not letting this halo over his head blind you until it's too late.
posted by hat_eater at 4:18 AM on March 23, 2019 [15 favorites]

This isn’t man repelling at all.
posted by Segundus at 4:49 AM on March 23, 2019 [10 favorites]

That was a sweet story and they sound happy.

We took longer to get married, but we did move in together almost that fast. It's worked out so far, so here's to impulsivity.
posted by Dip Flash at 5:43 AM on March 23, 2019 [1 favorite]

There's one couple like this in my extended family.

They're both the sort of lovely, undemanding person who it's very hard to figure out how to be nice to, if that makes any sense. Not that they're unappreciative, or that they want people to jump through hoops. Just that the stuff that makes other people happy doesn't always seem to work on them. You go to make a nice gesture, it doesn't actually feel good for either of you, they're just as apologetic about it as you are, and you shrug and go about your day together feeling amiably awkward and chagrinned.

But they do both always seem to find it immediately obvious how to be nice to each other.

And I imagine after living their entire lives surrounded by people who found them pleasantly incomprehensible, as soon as they figured out that they made actual sense to each other, getting married must have seemed like a no-brainer. They waited k months for some appropriate value of k, but I bet they knew way sooner.
posted by nebulawindphone at 6:00 AM on March 23, 2019 [26 favorites]

My parents got married whirlwind like this. My mom was living in Brussels; my dad was there on a business trip; they met while waiting for a really slow elevator, when my dad was like "Are you Indian?" and it turned out they were actually from the same town and knew several people in common but had never met before. Their first date was a fancy Indian restaurant; their second was poulet pizza at Pizzaland. (Still exists! Although now apparently a foodtruck not a cheap-eats restaurant.)

So my dad goes back to India after his business trip and tells his parents, "I met this woman and I want to marry her." Mind you, he hadn't yet said anything to my mom at the time (he was also in an arranged engagement to his sister's BFF, who -- spoiler alert -- ended up marrying my dad's cousin instead). So my dad and grandparents bundle off in a rickshaw to go meet my other grandparents, except my dad misremembers the address and they apparently wander around town for a while, including going to an auditorium that had the same name as my grandparents' apartment building. Anyway, they finally get there, and about a week later my mom gets a letter from her father being like "This guy showed up and says he wants to marry you, wtf is going on?" My dad's proposal arrived in the mail a couple days later.

So my mom is kind of taken aback and unsure. Her yearlong assignment in Brussels is over, so she goes home and goes on more dates with my dad, meets his parents and his friends. He has a job offer in the States but is delaying the answer until my mom can make a decision. Then she goes out of town to visit her sister for a couple weeks, and the way she tells it, she missed my dad so much that's when she knew her answer was yes.

So she comes back to their hometown, agrees to marry my dad, he agrees to the American job offer, and the company wants him to start in two weeks or something, so my folks get crash-married on the rooftop terrace of my grandparents' house and then go on a 4 day honeymoon before my dad gets on a plane to fly halfway around the world. My mom joined him a month later when her visa came through.

They just celebrated their 36th anniversary, and all I can say is thank goodness for really slow elevators.
posted by basalganglia at 6:07 AM on March 23, 2019 [112 favorites]

I'm going to be the hardass in this thread and state that Danny sounds like an asshat manchild, 22 years of marriage or not. That trust fund line killed this article for me - that and that "works in film" line being vague as anything.

This entire article reads like Jyll is the driving force in their relationship and Danny's an opportunist.

I say this with only the limited view I get from their history based on this article alone, but that's the impression I got and bless them both anyway for 22 years of marriage and 3 kids - something's working well enough for them.

But I didn't get tears from reading it or any white halo residue. Jyll's a strong, independent woman and Danny's damn lucky he found someone to set his trust fund white boy ass straight in this world.
posted by Lipstick Thespian at 6:12 AM on March 23, 2019 [36 favorites]

I love this. I looooove this. I'll never ever experience it but I love it.
posted by Freeze Peach at 6:14 AM on March 23, 2019 [3 favorites]

I love New York stories like this. I guess this is both a Union Square romance and possibly a 6 train family story (or at least it rings a bell of my own memories if the latter).

I was thinking recently about the extra dimension romance adds to one's internal narrative of the city, how cross streets and transit lines and train stations and routes one walks and one's metadata of all sorts (Translate entries, past mapped locations) become a palimpsest of memories, the narrative of all the things one has experienced with various people in various places. You get that as you traverse the city with friends and family and colleagues too, but romance imprints perhaps deeper.

See also: They Might Be Giants' "New York City," a love song to the city as much as it is exactly that kind of palimpsest of sparkly young love.

I also know of a couple who got together about this quickly, and it seems to have worked for them so far. (Though it fucked me up for a good while, my having been the other person involved with one of them at the time it happened.)

I'm happy for the couple in this story, and I've felt a supernatural bolt for a few people before (while I've never seen an aura, I have seen sidewalk hearts and other omens), so I know how it goes. Yet I also know very well about how the collateral damage part of that whirlwind can go. And I also believe that bolt can strike more than once, as we meet people who bring us lessons or feelings we need to understand at various points in our lives, and we hopefully bring people something of ourselves as well in return.
posted by limeonaire at 6:47 AM on March 23, 2019 [13 favorites]

I think Danny's Dad was lying.
posted by amanda at 7:16 AM on March 23, 2019 [2 favorites]

Lipstick Thespian: I'm going to be the hardass in this thread and state that Danny sounds like an asshat manchild, 22 years of marriage or not. That trust fund line killed this article for me - that and that "works in film" line being vague as anything.

Making up stories about people is fun, isn't it?

Maybe this is his IMDb entry?
posted by cowcowgrasstree at 8:06 AM on March 23, 2019 [24 favorites]

That trust fund line
read to me as his dad's way of saying "I'm a racist ass and will not be welcoming this woman into the family", regardless of whether an actual trust fund existed.
posted by Flannery Culp at 8:28 AM on March 23, 2019 [38 favorites]

That trust fund line

I don't know. That's something I would have said. But I would have been grinning from ear to ear as I jumped up to hug & kiss Jyl.
posted by notreally at 8:33 AM on March 23, 2019

This is really sweet! But it's probably just another case of "They've been together in every life since the Heian era!".
posted by heatherlogan at 8:42 AM on March 23, 2019

We met thirty five years ago and were madly in love, but somehow couldn't tell it to each other, we were too overwhelmed. We drifted apart, and spent the next thirty two years having reasonably unsatisfying lives. We're back in touch now and it's clear we never should have been apart. And we're very much doing our best to make up for lost time, and it's just incredible.

So now you know (it's hard to tell this story, it's so unbelievable. But true. And we are very happy.)

And seriously? If you think that it might be that person? Please tell them...
posted by emmet at 8:42 AM on March 23, 2019 [27 favorites]

I'm going to be the hardass in this thread and state that Danny sounds like an asshat manchild

Eh. He sounds like a guy who lacks conventional ambition. That’s not necessarily a deal-breaker or an indicator of a man-child. The only facts we know are that are 1. He did apparently choose to give up that trust fund 2. When his woman put her foot down and told him to go bring in some money, he went out and did it for her 3. In every photo, he’s got his arms thrown around her and a grin from ear to ear.

May we all find such an asshat with which to spend our lives.
posted by Slarty Bartfast at 9:05 AM on March 23, 2019 [78 favorites]

Danny's family, wow. That was the down note of the story.

Lipstick Thespian, I got the same vibe from Danny.
posted by doctornemo at 9:10 AM on March 23, 2019 [2 favorites]

4. He had a child outside of marriage and seemed to tell his parents that he was going to marry the other person and then didn't.
posted by Going To Maine at 9:10 AM on March 23, 2019

This entire article reads like Jyll is the driving force in their relationship and Danny's an opportunist.

The jerks and opportunists who take advantage of open-hearted women like Jyll don’t tend to stick around for 22 years and three children, in my experience. To me they sound like two people who weren’t afraid of loving or being loved and who were open to the unfamiliar at exactly the right moment—kismet. I would have loved to see a picture of their kids :-)
posted by sallybrown at 9:22 AM on March 23, 2019 [22 favorites]

I also think the "trust fund" might have been not real. It's up there with "we're disinheriting you." However, even if it's real, I don't think Danny gave a shit about it or else he would not have eloped, right? Or would have gotten a quickie divorce.

I'll put it this way: I had a deadbeat ex in my 20's who didn't like working who thankfully I did not elope with. I am biased on this kind of thing. Had I but known Jyll/Mocha Hurricane and known what I know now, I would have been like "don't marry a guy who's a deadbeat" myself. However, this one actually shaped up and got a job when asked. That is RARE. It has WORKED OUT. We're seeing this from 22 years later when we know it's all okay, not "20somethings eloped after 2 weeks and this just happened." It could have been a disaster, but it wasn't.

May we also find the one with the halo over their head someday. (But probably not.)
posted by jenfullmoon at 9:29 AM on March 23, 2019 [6 favorites]

Because Jyll is the driving energy of the article and the driving force behind creating the relationship, perhaps the story that is not being told is about Danny's growth.
posted by Going To Maine at 9:32 AM on March 23, 2019 [6 favorites]

luckily for jyll and danny they seem like the kind of people who don't really care what random strangers on the internet think of their love, or who's the driving force behind a relationship they let us get a very tiny peak into.
posted by JimBennett at 10:18 AM on March 23, 2019 [29 favorites]

I can't remember reading a story--especially a true story, whatever that means--that is this heartwarming AND hilarious.
posted by kozad at 10:29 AM on March 23, 2019 [2 favorites]

Mocha Hurricane! Mocha Hurricane!
posted by mochapickle at 10:30 AM on March 23, 2019 [7 favorites]

Jyll and I used to go to the same coffee shop. I do not know her, really, at all, but she is a woman who makes an impression, and that impression is definitely not “someone who is likely to be taken advantage of for even five minutes,” let alone 22 years.

She’s pretty awesome. And she can sure as hell take care of herself.

I cannot believe she’s 52 though.
posted by schadenfrau at 10:31 AM on March 23, 2019 [44 favorites]

I really enjoy how vividly this interview conveys their individual voices and interaction; the interviewer did a good job capturing it.
posted by LobsterMitten at 10:38 AM on March 23, 2019 [9 favorites]

Whatever works, man. Whatever works.

(Married 14 years, been a couple for 24 years, lived in different countries for 5 years before marriage.)
posted by srboisvert at 10:39 AM on March 23, 2019 [3 favorites]

The only facts we know are that are 1. He did apparently choose to give up that trust fund

We decidedly don't know that, especially since he was totally broke.
posted by kenko at 12:17 PM on March 23, 2019

I was talking to a work colleague once and he mentioned that he got married two weeks after meeting his wife. "We both just knew." "How did your family take it?"

"Both families were very angry. We both come from traditional Chinese families. They weren't so angry that we got married so fast. They were furious that we eloped. A wedding is an important social event for the families and extended families. So I called around and found a hall and a catering service, then we called the families and we had the wedding they wanted."

This was the most practical and sane and mentally healthy approach to having a big wedding that I have ever heard of.

"How long have you been married now?" "15 years. We have two kids."

There are people who get married quickly who are being rash and stupid and the marriages don't last long. And there are those who get married quickly for very good reasons and it is the right thing to do. I would never have believed it before talking to my very happily married friend.
posted by eye of newt at 4:45 PM on March 23, 2019 [3 favorites]

Every marriage is a foolish decision, because in our culture every marriage has a high chance of failure. There isn't anything that really predicts which ones will work and which ones will fail so you make your choices and hope for the best. In my family, we have a fine tradition of marrying our one-night stands. My dad: 37 years before he died. My uncle: 41 and counting. Me: 14 years and counting.
posted by DarlingBri at 5:34 PM on March 23, 2019 [8 favorites]

Regarding the halo, the aura, the light...

My (now ex-) husband and I went to inspect a house we were interested in buying. The owner was selling because she'd bought another house closer to town. I arrived up the path first and could see both my husband coming up behind me from around the corner, and the owner on the front portico, but they couldn't see each other. Then I saw a band of light connecting the two of them before they even met.

We didn't buy that house. Three months later we bought another one close to town and our new next door neighbour was the woman selling the first house. Husband and I broke up soon after (my instigation) and I moved out. A month or so after that he and the neighbour began dating. They've been together nearly 20yrs now, longer than his three previous marriages combined, and they are both happy and productive. I reckon 'seeing the light' helped me reconcile his quick moving on with another woman. It was more than a neighbourly convenience and their shared passion for footy and beer, I knew they really had something connecting them together.
posted by Thella at 9:31 PM on March 23, 2019 [20 favorites]

I liked the interview a lot. Danny could have gone either way fir me. What struck me, and I cannot pinpoint why, is that I would really like to meet or find out what their three children are like. I bet they are really interesting.
posted by AugustWest at 10:13 PM on March 23, 2019 [6 favorites]

That was sweet. And I needed some sweet today. Thank you.
posted by LarryC at 12:00 AM on March 24, 2019

My wife came home from our first date knowing she was going to marry me (her mother confirms that she said such a thing), but wisely waited for me to come to the same conclusion, which I did about three months in. Proposed nine months after that realization, married a year after that. The proposal anniversary date is June 15, the first date anniversary is June 16, and the wedding anniversary is June 17. 24 years married this June. Life moves fast.
posted by jscalzi at 6:15 AM on March 24, 2019 [19 favorites]

My husband asked me to marry him on our first date. Reader, we just celebrated our 23rd anniversary. True love can and does happen. It’s still work to make it last, mind you.
posted by SecretAgentSockpuppet at 7:05 AM on March 24, 2019 [10 favorites]

I like the level of her own reaction the interviewer included. "I'm cheesing so hard. I'm so emotional." It brought me into the story more.
posted by Emmy Rae at 12:08 PM on March 24, 2019 [2 favorites]

jscalzi, love hearing this. If you haven't, maybe check out my first comment upthread. Your and Charlie's writing has always been close to hand within the span of years I note. Here's to many more for all of us in this thread, including Danny and Jyll.
posted by mwhybark at 9:24 PM on March 24, 2019 [1 favorite]

Yup, I fell in love with my ex-fiancee the moment I met her, and vice versa. We were talking about marriage within a few weeks. It obviously didn't work out (not for the reasons you'd think) but it was a special, magical time in my life. This article brought those feelings back. Thank you for posting.
posted by coffeeand at 5:30 AM on March 25, 2019 [2 favorites]

I wonder if my wife and I count for this. I proposed and she accepted within a month or two of our first date, when we were both teenagers.

And then we broke up, got back together, both came out as queer, broke up, got back together, broke up, got back together, broke up and stopped talking to each other for a few years, I married someone else, I got divorced, she declared she'd given up on men, got back together anyway, got married, she came out as a lesbian, I decided to transition, and we both went oh holy fucking shit this makes so much more sense now.

It still sort of feels like we've been continual presences in each other's lives since day one, even when we weren't talking to each other. We never have any idea how to count anniversaries so we just count years since we first met.
posted by nebulawindphone at 5:47 AM on March 25, 2019 [14 favorites]

To me, marriage is a societal construct that hamstrings more relationships than it helps. I've been with my partner for 19 years and we have two kids. I will not be getting married, but I do love her, and I grok the way Jyll and Danny talk about each other. We were pretty inseparable from day one.

I'm happy for other people to get married though, if they want to, and I fucking love a wedding party, hypocrite that I am.
posted by trif at 6:04 AM on March 25, 2019 [1 favorite]