As Valentine’s Day comes around the corner, the familiar festivity fills the ACHS hallways. Young couples show a little too much PDA, situationships scramble for the perfect trying-but-not-trying-too-hard gift, and anticipation fills the hearts of those hoping for a secret admirer. In addition to dealing with their students’ ups and downs, teachers also want to make sure they don’t under-celebrate their own partners. Students are often so caught up in their own Valentine’s Day excitement that they seldom stop to wonder who their teachers are going home to this February 14th. Theogony went behind the scenes to sit down with 3 teachers and hear their love stories.
Only a handful of people know the truth about how Veronica Yale, ACHS chemistry teacher, met her husband- until now. “We met on Match.com,” Yale says. Growing up in an “old school” town in Texas, it was uncommon for Yale- in her late 20s- to be unmarried and childless. She decided to explore online dating, where she matched with Roburt Yale, who was in the army and stationed at Fort Bliss. She was prepared to talk online for a while before meeting in person, but he insisted they go out for lunch. “We just clicked,” said Yale “We tell people we met at Barnes and Noble.”
Six months later, the two were engaged. “He proposed to me at the airport, in front of this little gift shop in El Paso.” This was fitting, considering traveling was (and still is) their favorite thing to do together. “We leave the country at least twice a year because that’s where we just bond,” Yale said, through a smile.
21 years later, they’re still happily married. “He’s Mr. Perfect. My parents love him more than they love me- no really,” she said. All those years together seem to have only strengthened her love and appreciation for him. “He’s just my rock. [The] ying to my yang.”
The love story of Dillon King, English teacher new to ACHS, began in the friend-zone. Journey, his fiance, was in a long-term relationship when they first met through their college theater department. It wasn’t until the following summer, when they were working in the theater department’s shop crew together that they were able to truly connect. “We got to know each other a lot over that summer and we got closer and closer.” By August, the two were official.
After dating for 5 years, King started planning his proposal. “[Journey] had always said ‘I don’t want to get proposed to on a holiday’, she thought it was cliche.” King said. “So I thought, wouldn’t it be funny if I proposed the day after a holiday.” Hence, King booked an Airbnb in the Shenandoah Valley for February 15th. Unfortunately, that idea was shut down when he remembered a friend was coming to visit them that same weekend, so he rescheduled the trip for the next weekend. When they finally began their weekend getaway, King planned to pop the question in a beautiful cavern that they were going to tour, however those plans were quickly diverted. “It was awful,” he said. The cavern was crowded with “random people who were not very nice”- any chances for a romantic moment alone were null. So King was scrambling for a new plan. “And by the way, she knew the whole time because I had a ring-box shaped indent in my pocket.”
He finally landed on doing it on the deck cabin they were staying in which was the perfect mix of private and peaceful, yet still special with a pretty view of the river. “It ended up being very nice.” They plan to get married this summer, and he seems pretty thrilled about it. “She is constantly off the cuff writing little poems, she paints with acrylics and with watercolors and they’re always so good, she comes up with songs on the fly,” he said, explaining why her creative intelligence was one of the things that made him fall in love with her. “She’s just so intelligent and it comes out in so many beautiful and fun ways. I love that about her.”
Ed Drew, JV Titan girl’s basketball coach and ACHS administrator, considers how he met his fiance, Ashley, fate. On December 18th, 2020, the two happened to sit on the same couch at a mutual friend’s graduation party. “I was on one end of the couch and she was on the other end,” he said. “Towards the end of the party, I wanted to talk to her but my social battery was out so I was like ‘Man I’m just gonna leave’.” Just as he was getting up, she asked him a question. “She was like hey how do you know so and so, the person who was graduating. And we just started talking. By the end of the night people were asking us if we were boyfriend/girlfriend and we were like ‘no this is our first time meeting.’”
“What was crazy was that if I didn’t end up seeing her that night, we actually both went to another mutual friend’s Christmas party that very next day,” he said. “So I guess you could say it was fate that we’d be together forever.”
Fast forward to 2023, and Drew was ready to propose. On April 22nd, on a rooftop in Washington, D.C., he got down on one knee; friends, family, and flower petals in a heart-shape surrounding them.
Ashley, a successful photographer and entrepreneur, has been a mentor for Theogony, as she’s shared her expertise on photography and given us valuable tips and tricks. “She’s just flawless,” Drew said when asked his favorite quality about her. “I mean, I can’t really pick one, or I’m doing her a disservice.”
It’s easy to get caught up in the Valentine’s Day bustle, but it’s important to remember the day is really all about appreciating the ones you love. Seeing all three of these teachers talk about their loved ones with such intent and passion, it looked almost as if they were 16 again; a twinkle in their eye as they gushed about their hope-to-be Valentine.
