In preschool, he promised to marry her. Twenty years later, he did just that.
One of Matt Grodsky’s earliest memories is standing before his preschool class and declaring that he would marry Laura Scheel, a classmate he was enamored with.
Twenty years later, he did just that — proposing to Scheel at their preschool in May 2015 and officially tying the knot a year later in December, according to AZCentral.
The pair were inseparable in preschool. Scheel said she always chose Grodsky to be her partner on field trips because of his sense of humor.
Sometimes, they would hold hands on those trips.
But Grodsky’s preferred methods of flirting? Whacking a piñata and reciting lines from Disney’s Lion King on the playground, he told The Huffington Post.
“Lion King was what all the kids were into back then, so we would spend most of our time reciting lines from the movie on the playground,” he said. “I remember trying to impress her during a Cinco de Mayo celebration at the preschool where we were trying to break open a piñata.”
“Fortunately, I was the kid who managed to do it and I assume it got her attention.”
For her part, Scheel jokingly remembers Grodsky as the kid in preschool who “just followed me around.”
The two lost touch for a decade after they both went to different elementary schools. But they were reunited in freshman year of high school when Scheel saw Grodsky’s name in a mutual friend’s cellphone.
She eventually agreed to meet up with her first love.
“It wasn't until High School that we reconnected by happenstance through a mutual friend,” Grodsky wrote for the caption of an Instagram post that made the couple’s story go viral. “Within two weeks, we decided to be boyfriend and girlfriend. We continued to date through out [sic] all of High School, even though we went to different schools.”
But after high school, the physical distance between the pair grew: Scheel enrolled in an in-state college while Grodsky moved to a university in Chicago, according to AZCentral.
The couple coped with the help of social media, FaceTime dates and visits to each other’s college campuses, which were around 1,500 miles apart.
During his final college semester, Grodsky took Scheel back to their old preschool, saying it was for a picnic, according to AZCentral. But he had a surprise for his long-time girlfriend — and proposed soon after.
“The whole car ride to the preschool she kept asking me why I seemed anxious. I kept checking my pocket when she wasn’t looking to make sure the ring was still there,” he said to The Huffington Post. “I dropped down on one knee while my brother came in with the phone, snapping photos. Laura was shocked.”
At Scheel’s request, Grodsky wrote a touching message about how the young couple met for the Instagram account “The Way We Met,” which highlights heartwarming stories about the origins of relationships.
The post, which garnered media attention, received nearly 30,000 likes and hundreds of comments.
The widespread attention the couple’s love story received came as a bit of a surprise to Grodsky and Scheel.
“To us, it seems normal because we lived it and others think it's an amazing story that you take for granted sometimes,” Grodsky said. “It's really lucky we did find each other not only in preschool but later in life.”
This story was originally published August 15, 2017 at 9:30 AM with the headline "In preschool, he promised to marry her. Twenty years later, he did just that.."