Photo: jessica fields (2)
You can find love in the strangest of places, and Jessica and Matt Fields are living proof after catching each others' eyes at aWhite Castledrive-thru 25 years ago.
How thehusband and wifefirst met is a tale Jessica, 42, loves to share. “I want the world to know. I think it’s such a cool story,” she tells PEOPLE.
Their romance started in the summer of1998when Jessica was a 17-year-old lifeguard on her way to start a shift with her friend, who was craving a burger before work. “My friend was begging me to go there. I didn’t really want to. White Castle before lifeguarding? Doesn’t sound like a great idea,” she says, before admitting: “It ended up being a great idea.”
jessica fields
The friends were waiting in their car at the Indianapolis fast food joint. The car ahead of them in line had the love of Jessica’s life inside — she just didn’t know it yet.
“My friend and I saw him looking in his rearview mirror at us. And I was like, ‘Kristen, he’s looking at us. Why don’t you go talk to him?'” Jessica remembers.
“I thought he was cute. He had aDuke Blue Devils’ baseball cap on … he just caught my eye,” she says. “And of course, we had our lifeguard bathing suits on. So he was probably like, ‘Oh, wow, driving around in swim suits!'”
Her friend Kristen got out of the car and went to chat with Matt, who had a half day off from working at the local hospital. Kristen had a boyfriend at the time so she ended up giving Matt Jessica’s phone number. After they had all ordered food, they pulled up their cars and chatted some more.
Jessica said it took Matt two days to actually ring her up. “He wasn’t going to because he thought it was very strange for people to approach him in a White Castle drive-thru,” she says with a laugh. “But that was my friend!”
A day after talking on the phone, the two met in person. “[We] realized our parents actually lived across the street, not in the neighborhood, but across the busy street from each other in two different neighborhoods,” she says.
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White Castle will always hold a special place in their hearts. “For some of the holidays, we will go pick up White Castle, usually for our anniversary,” Jessica tells PEOPLE.
And more often than not, on their anniversary, they will head to the same White Castle they met at. It’s only about 15 minutes from where they now live in Brownsburg, Indiana.
Jessica says the story is so unique that many people don’t believe it when they first find out.
“Our friends are like, ‘How have we never heard this story?’ she says. “And these are people that we’ve known for years, and they ended up seeing it in the local newspaper.
“Nobody ever believes it, or they’re like, ‘Really? You guys met at a White Castle drive-thru?’ But yeah, here we are, three kids later. And almost 25 years of knowing each other.”
source: people.com
