There is an old saying about finding love: There’s a lid for every pot. People find love in all kinds of places, from the supermarket to the Internet.
The Spotlight spoke to some area residents who met their other halves in a variety of unexpected ways. Some were set up intentionally by friends while others were falling in love but didn’t even know it.
One of my best friends in high school was named Jim. He and I ran on the track and cross-country team together, and by junior year we began hanging out with a group of track guys, going to movies, parties, dances and concerts, said Jack Rightmyer of Burnt Hills.
`Jim had a younger sister named Judy, and during senior year he began asking us, ‘Do you guys mind if I bring my sister and her friends to the concert?’` said Rightmyer.
While he and his friends groaned at first and resisted, thinking that they couldn’t have as much fun with their friend’s little sister hanging around, over time, Rightmyer started to enjoy hanging out with Judy.
`All through college, Judy became a good friend of mine. We’d write letters to each other, and on our vacations we’d always make sure to get her friends out with my friends,` said Rightmyer.
`By the time I was a senior in college, I had a secret crush on Judy, but she was my friend Jim’s sister and I couldn’t ask her out,` said Rightmyer.
However, they continued spending time together in groups, heading to the Adirondacks, skiing, swimming at Lake George, and going to movies and concerts at SPAC.
`After I graduated from college I began teaching at Notre Dame-Bishop Gibbons High School in Schenectady. I was busy teaching and coaching full time,` said Rightmyer.
Judy was a junior at Plattsburgh State College. Rightmyer was getting settled into life as an adult, living in his own apartment and working full time.
`One afternoon in March I went out for a long run after school. While I was on my run, Judy drove by, rolled her window down, and we had a nice talk. She was home from college for a few days,` said Rightmyer.
`After she left, I continued my run, but all I could think of was Judy and how much I liked her; how much I had always liked her.`
Later that night, he called his friend Jim and told him that while he knew it `sounded weird,` he wanted to ask Judy on a date. He wanted to make sure it was OK with Jim first.
Jim gave his permission, and the rest was history. The two began dating that summer.
`A few months after we began dating, we knew that we wanted to spend our life together,` said Rightmyer. `In September of her senior year, I visited her for a weekend in Plattsburgh. We sat on two Adirondack chairs overlooking Lake Champlain and talked about getting married.`
He told his future wife that they would get married and have two children ` a boy and a girl ` and that they would travel a lot.
`Twenty-six and a half years later we’re still married, and we’ve traveled to England, Ireland, Poland, the Caribbean, Italy and all over our country. We also have two children, a boy and a girl,` said Rightmyer.
Anna Carbonneau, 76, of Colonie, and her late husband, Donald, also met through friends, but they were deliberately set up.
They were next-door neighbors, but didn’t interact much until mutual friends decided to play Cupid. For Carbonneau, the attraction was instant.
They were first introduced by their mothers but didn’t end up spending much time together until a few months later, when she had just finished nursing school and he had just gotten out of the service.
Carbonneau’s husband played electric guitar in a band. Their mutual friends invited Carbonneau to listen, and she eventually ended up singing with them.
`One thing led to another, and we were both very shy back in those days,` said Carbonneau.
`One evening he took his car, and we stopped by the lake where we used to live and he asked me if I would be his girl, so I truly loved him from the minute I met him,` said Carbonneau.
`Then it was a few weeks later and he asked me if I would consider marrying him,` said Carbonneau.
They had five children and were married for 52 years. Donald died in 2005.
`It was a true love affair. I had a friend who worked with me who wrote me a note a year after Don passed away and said, ‘I didn’t know what to say to you, but there are very few people who are truly in love, and you two were,’` said Carbonneau.
For Katherine Burbank, executive director of the Guilderland Chamber of Commerce, her story is somewhat like a modern-day Brady Bunch tale. She met her husband, a single father, at work.
`I was getting divorced at the time, and I knew that he liked me and he kept stopping in, but I was in the process of getting divorced,` said Burbank.
When her divorce was final, Burbank said, her husband asked her out on a date.
`He said on that first date that I was going to marry him and I said, ‘Oh, no I’m not — I just got finished with a divorce,’ but I did [marry him], and that was almost five years ago,` said Burbank. `We’re the Brady Bunch family now. We have five kids between the two of us.`
DiAnna Zack, who lives and works in Saratoga Springs, met the love of her life when she was fixed up with her husband, Gary, on a blind date ` but the date wasn’t set up with the best intentions.
`I was dating someone who a friend of mine wanted to date, so she said, ‘You know, you have to meet this guy – he’s pretty nice,’ so I did meet him, and it turned out I knew his uncle, who I loved to death, and it was a really unusual beginning,` said Zack. `Things like that happen, I guess.`
Things worked out. Zack’s husband told her from day one that if she wanted to be involved with him, she would have to be involved with his glass
business, which was his life. She took to it. Today the Zacks own Symmetry Gallery in Saratoga Springs, and spend a significant amount of time in their respective studios blowing glass into pieces of art and jewelry.
Last, but not least, Edward Gill, who teaches at the Bethlehem Central Middle School, met his wife, Patty, when they were working together as park rangers in New York City.
`We worked together for about two years, both involved with other people,` said Gill.
He said those other relationships eventually faded and Patty was promoted to his boss.
`We started hanging out together as friends, and it developed into more. We thought we were being discreet, with a work relationship, but all our friends and coworkers knew. I think perhaps before I did,` said Gill.
Still crazy after all these years
Like most things in life, relationships take work.
`For starters, the best way to keep a relationship alive and healthy is for couples to cultivate the ability to be aware of their dance,` said David Olsen, director for the Samaritan Counseling Center of the Capital Region in Scotia.
Olsen said that sometimes one partner ends up pursuing the other partner more, or one becomes more communicative and the other becomes less communicative. He said it’s important to find a sense of balance where couples can work together.
`Couples can cultivate the ability to recognize the dance as it happens,` said Olsen. `They’re going to do a whole lot less damage, and secondly then if they can use that to pursue deeper forms of communication then obviously they’re going to have a more intimate relationship.`
Olsen also recommended creating certain rituals that couples can do together to keep things fresh ` if couples enjoy going out to dinner, they should make sure they find time to do it with relative frequency. If they enjoy going to movies or plays together, again, they should make time to enjoy those activities.
`Literally making that a priority despite how busy both of them might be,` said Olsen.
When it comes to finding love, some of the obvious routes, such as online dating, aren’t as beneficial as they seem.
`A lot of people are looking online. Unfortunately, the odds of that happening in terms of it lasting are not terribly good,` said Olsen.
Instead, people should look in places where they’ll meet people who share similar interests.
If you’re very spiritual, Olsen suggested looking at people in the same religious community. If you love hiking, join a hiking club. If you like cooking, try a cooking class.
`Think of where you have interests and get involved with people who share those same interests, and over time, there’s a way to meet people that way,` said Olsen.
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