Amy Giberson and Justin Pounders thought that they met on the popular dating website Match.com, but as fate would have it, their paths crossed 30 years earlier in the halls of a Florida preschool.
The compatible preschool sweethearts Giberson, 33, and Pounders, 33, who have already set a wedding date despite not yet being engaged, felt the spark and began dating after being “matched” on Match.com. They had no idea that they had originally found each other in love, or at least in a crush, 30 years earlier.
When the two first met at Sunshine Preschool in St. Petersburg, Florida, the connection was undeniable. Former owner and teacher Diane Twar told People Magazine she still remembers their innocent courtship. “It was a quiet, bashful romance.” Twar said, “They liked each other from afar, it was a young love, like a sweet crush, you know? They insisted on sitting next to each other in our school picture.”
Giberson shared an old photo of the two sitting next to one another paired with a current photo on her Instagram last month where she wrote, “3 nights ago, [Pounder’s] mom found our class picture from preschool and not only are we both in it but we’re sitting right next to each other. Being next to this man is my favorite place in the world.”
After preschool the couple split, moved away from their hometown and attended different schools. Though they remained in Florida, Pounders attended Florida State University in Tallahassee and Giberson attended University of South Florida in Tampa – their young love fading until they had no recollection of who the other was.
It wasn’t until last November that the couple unknowingly reconnected their path that began three decades earlier. “I saw her photo and for whatever reason, was instantly drawn to her,” Pounders told People. “She just had this great energy, you could tell. I can’t explain it, but I knew I had to get to know this girl.”
The two quickly became inseparable online, chatting via email and texting one another until their first date, and to them their first meeting, at a local restaurant.
“When we met up and we hugged, it was like I had known him my whole life,” said Giberson. “When I first saw him, I felt that I was staring at the man I was going to marry.”
It wasn’t until Giberson and Pounders’ first anniversary of their first meeting one another that the preschool sweethearts realized they may have met before.
“We were in the car and Justin casually mentioned that he loved my name because he had had a crush on a girl named Amy in his preschool,” Pounders said. “Then I joked to him, ‘Well, it’s not me, so I don’t want to hear about her!'”
As they continued chatting they realized that they had gone to the same Sunshine Preschool, at the very same time, and they suddenly needed to know if the Amy who Pounders had liked so much back then, was the same woman he was in love with now!
After a search through old photographs, their fate was sealed. When their parents turned up photographs of the couple together, then three years old, Pounders said, “I just started crying, I was ecstatic. I was the Amy he had liked all those years ago! It was definitely meant to be.”
In a manner that seems fitting for their strange lover’s fate, the couple has chosen their wedding date and a honeymoon location, even though Pounders is still waiting for the right time to propose to his preschool sweetheart.
“We’re doing everything backwards, but we don’t care. We’re best friends in love,” Giberson said. “And apparently we always have been.”
“It was meant to be,” Pounders said.
