By Natalie McCurdy

Assistant Principal, Jack Ballard, and his wife, Meghan, are proof that college sweethearts can last a lifetime.

While Ballard’s first impression of Meghan may not have been a cheerful one, it was still an introduction that left a lasting memory in his mind. “She on the very first day of school slipped and fell and tore her Medial Collateral Ligament (MCL) in her knee…and that was why we had to have wet floor signs in the cafeteria every day,” he said.

They crossed paths later freshman year, still unknown to each other, when an ironic incidence occurred in that very cafeteria. “I had spilled a soda in front of her in line at the same cafe at one point Freshman year,” he said.

Regardless of their rather unfortunate first interactions with each other, they still managed to reconnect through an online dating website, OkCupid, three years later. “We actually ended up meeting online in our senior year, and that’s when we started dating,” he said. Their online connection gew into a relationship that Ballard knew would last. “We couldn’t stop talking to each other, we couldn’t stop seeing each other,” he said.

Their relationship was never doubted by any of their peers during their senior year together, regardless of the fact they were still in college. “Everyone could just tell we were crazy about each other,” he said.

Love at first sight, a cliché in high school and college relationships, was in fact a reality for this lucky couple in their final year of school. “It was really immediately, I just had this feeling, this was going to be the person I was going to marry,” he said.

Ballard and Meghan seemed to have a unbreakable link. Their inevitable proposal, however, was not the traditional kind. It was more of an agreement that they both wanted to get married, proving that their love had grown strong just 18 months after they had met online. “We had been talking about it a lot and it was pretty informal, we were actually on a long car drive…it kind of came as more of a conversation like ‘We should get married’, ‘Yeah we should’,” he said. According to Ballard, the he stereotypical grand gesture proposal was not their style.

They were married six months later and have been together happily ever since.