8 Girls Talk About How They First Met Their Partners

By Ysabel Vitangcol on February 11, 2021

If you’ve seen the cult classic Christmas rom-com The Holiday, then you’re familiar with the concept of a “meet cute,” aka a perfectly-engineered, destined-by-the-universe scenario between two budding lovers. It’s the beginning of kilig, and for some lucky people, it’s happened in real life. Below, and just in time for Valentine’s Day, here are eight IRL stories to make you swoon!

1. Brei and Brian, 8 years married

Brei and Brian

“I met my husband in 2009 at a bar in Ortigas. My best friend from Australia came home, and we were catching up over drinks. Since a lot of us were single, we asked one of our guy friends if he could invite some of his friends over. 

“An hour later, three guys came, and then there was this cute chinito surfer wearing a trucker cap, a shirt, board shorts, and slippers who came in and, like in the movies, the world stopped and everything went slow-mo. That’s when I knew he was the one! 

“I had to leave early, and he followed me to the car to ask for my number and then he realized he didn’t have his phone. I gave it anyway, and he told me not to worry ‘cause he saved it in his head. Three days later, he asked me out and the rest is history. We’re now married.”

2. Sam and Mykee, newly engaged

“Our story doesn’t really have a romantic, fairytale beginning. In fact, we just started out as neighbors. Our parents became friends, which led us to carpool together to school along with my cousins and his brothers. I was the only girl in the carpool so I was kind of the odd one out. He was also this popular basketball player, and I was some tiny freshman in braces. A lot of girls in my batch thought he was so cute and although I agreed, I didn’t really have a crush on him. I didn’t think he was an option to pine over – we barely talked back then! 

We went on to date other people and have other serious relationships throughout high school and college. We completely lost touch– we didn’t even follow each other on instagram. Then, as I was about to graduate college, he suddenly reached out. Not going to lie, the tiny high school freshman with neon pink braces in me got really kilig. We started talking casually from time to time, until he finally asked me out on a date. 

It definitely was not smooth sailing from there. It took a few more months until we finally decided to be a couple. There were a lot of growing pains and obstacles we had to overcome, but we never gave up on each other. He was very patient with me as we both grew into the adults we were meant to be. He did everything he could to be the partner he thought I deserved. “

Fast forward to 6 years later, and now we’re engaged! There was no exact moment that I knew he was “the one;” I guess I just knew. The easiest “yes” of my life.

3. Steph and Ken, 3 years married

“[We met] on Bumble! Kasi sa Bumble diba, girl talaga dapat nauuna mag-message sa guy after you match. I think ang sinabi ko sa kanya: ‘Nice photo. How are you?’ The rest is history.”

4. Anya and Aeus, 5 years married

“I met my husband at the same office we worked in, years after I swore to myself that I’d never date anyone from the same office (because I used to date someone in our cheer team, so same concept LOL). We were both publishers for Summit’s men’s titles, but we hardly worked together since we handled different titles. I was single then, he was in a relationship. 

“Over the years we became good friends, office best friends even, since we often went together as a group to clients when selling our titles (men’s titles more or less have common advertisers) and talked about anything under the sun. I never expected us to happen at all, until small sparks flew as our friendship progressed. The stars aligned because when those sparks came he was single na, and I was that friend who was always there to support him. Boom, we just happened! At that moment, I realized he was ‘The One’ because I always believed I would end up with someone who was a good friend. Numerous failed set-up dates confirmed this belief during the five years I was single.


Two years into the relationship, he finally proposed. We married a month after we celebrated our 3rd anniversary as boyfriend and girlfriend. 5 years married, almost 9 years together with 1 energetic Maltese dog and a baby boy coming this March 2024.”

5. Apple and Franz, 6 years married

Apple and Franz

“Our common friend set us up in around 2015. We started chatting sa Facebook, then n’ung comfortable na kami, we decided to meet up. Our first date was in Rustics because he was working in the Greenhills area that time (with our friend as my chaperone, LOL). Rustics turned out to be our default date place. Fast forward to 2017—our friend was promoted to Best Man, and the theme of our wedding was rustic, too!”

6. Julie and Jet, newly engaged

“We were dumb teenagers when we met in 2009 as freshmen at UP Manila. I was fifteen with newly rebonded hair and a sharp fringe worthy of the early 2000s. He was seventeen and didn’t know what to do with his curly hair. We were both helplessly lazy in our academics so we spent so much of our time cutting (math) classes and hanging out at the mall near our campus. Of course, we failed our classes (math, to emphasize) together. But in that time, we bonded over our shared affinity for zombies and paperback novels (we couldn’t afford hard covers then), and hated on math together.

We laughed in public places to our hearts’ content, not a care in the world, as the young ones do. We didn’t get together though, until we graduated four years later (yes, we eventually both passed math in time to graduate). I think it took so long because we were both afraid to lose the friendship if a romantic relationship didn’t work out. But after an excursion at the beach to celebrate having earned our degree, standing at the cusp of the rest of our lives, the possibility of our friendship fading through time and adulthood, we chose to hold on and take the proverbial leap. We realized we would be doing the universe a disservice if we didn’t acknowledge what had been in our hearts all along – pure love.

It’s been ten years and we’ve both done a lot of growing. He’s now a lawyer at a reputable law firm in Makati, engaged to the luckiest brand campaigns manager Belo has ever seen. We’ve also hatched the perfect strategy in case of a zombie apocalypse and still laugh like hyenas.

The moral of our story, I guess, is you don’t need to be a math genius to find the perfect solution to life. All it takes is a bad hairstyle, a healthy zombie obsession, and a lot of love and friendship. It’ll all add up.”

7. Danielle and Arion, engaged

“We met in Spain six years ago (matched on Tinder actually, haha!) in the most unlikely of circumstances. He moved to Spain a year prior and had just gotten out of a 3-year relationship. I, on the other hand, had just dropped out of law school and decided to switch career paths and work in Spain for a year to rediscover myself. You could say we were both going through pivotal times in our lives. Maybe there is some merit in the saying, ‘you find love when you stop looking.’

“I’m not a big believer in destiny or whatever you call it, but our story does make me wonder. I mean, what are the odds of two strangers who grew up in the same small town (Cebu) finding each other in the same small town (Marbella, Spain) many years later—and discovering we had similar social circles too! The fact that we were so compatible from the start—in personality, values, interests, humor, and even love languages—was amazing to us. Whether or not soulmates really do exist, I think we found them in each other..”

8. Trish and Ian, 8 years married

“The jock meets the goth. He hated her. She didn’t like jocks. Field trip. A bus accident. Stuck on the side of a mountain for 5 hours. She said, “Pare, tigil mo na ‘yang yosi mo.” He wasn’t able to smoke one stick of the five cigarette packs he brought.

“We’re married with one furbaby.”

Editor’s note: this article has been updated as of February 2024.

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