Sometimes love is in the air, digitized, and shared via Wi-Fi.
Zooming into a Relationship
By Marissa Gerber Pinnock (BS ’23), San Francisco
Joining my ECON 110 class via Zoom from my parents’ house was not how I visualized returning to BYU after my mission, but the COVID-19 pandemic was in full force.
Just before the first midterm, a classmate messaged me via Zoom asking if I wanted to join his study group. I noticed that he was one of the students who always had his camera on and participated when the professor asked questions. Thrilled for the chance to study with someone who understood the challenging material, I responded with an enthusiastic yes.
After the midterm the same boy, Joshua S. Pinnock (BS ’24), messaged asking if I was available to join his BYU Zoom link before class to discuss a few of the homework questions. To my surprise, this “study group” was just the two of us—which became a regular occurrence.
During one such “study session,” Josh asked me on a lunch date. When he picked me up in person, my first thought was “Wow, he’s taller than I expected”— a classic video call phenomenon.
As spring term ended, we started officially dating. When Josh left to do summer sales in California, we continued to video call via Zoom. We pushed the limits of our BYU Zoom accounts one Sunday with an 11-hour call!
Eventually, I asked Josh—then my fiancé—why he had invited me, of all the people in our class, to join that fateful study group. He replied that during one class, when I was commenting, he thought I was both smart and cute. He had dual purposes: to find a study partner and a potential date. I’m glad I had my Zoom camera on that day!
Matched by Machine
By Julie Tews Moore (BS ’80), Filer, ID
What does a farm girl from Idaho have in common with a city boy from Los Angeles? The setting was the BYU 6th Branch dance. In early December 1977, a mammoth computer was programmed to take simple input data and generate lists of assigned partners for a few of the more popular songs.
About halfway through the evening, the computer matched me by height to dance with Raymond J. Moore (BS ’81, ME ’82). After talking and dancing, we parted with the promise of getting together and dancing again.
A few days later the city boy came to my apartment complex looking for singers to join his caroling group. Recognizing him, I grabbed my coat, knowing full well I would need a ride home and knowing whom I would ask!
We dated all of winter semester 1978, fell in love, and were married in August before returning for four more years at BYU to complete our degrees. Now 48 years, 4 children, and 15 grandchildren later, we are still in love and on special occasions still dance.
Fiche-ing for Love
By Sharlynn King Traver (BS ’78), El Paso, TX
When I returned to BYU after my mission, I enjoyed running into returned missionaries I’d served with while in Uruguay and Paraguay. There was one elder in particular who I seemed to cross paths with a lot more than any others. It wasn’t until months later, after we were married, that he admitted he had looked up my class schedule on the microfiche in the Wilkinson Center, and when class ended, he would run across campus to where I would be walking between classes. After visiting with me, he would run all the way back to his next class. His ingenious persistence paid off.
Mission: Secret Valentine
By Brandon D. Porter (BS ’06), Kaysville, UT
It was the week before Valentine’s Day. My roommate entered our apartment and said, “Guys, we need to get ourselves some valentines.” His comment sparked an idea: I could be Danielle Taylor’s (BS ’06) secret admirer.
Danielle and I had met several months before. I wanted to ask her out but had struggled to figure out how to even get to know her. We were now in the same FHE group and having fun building a friendship.
I built a plan for the week: I’d leave Danielle a cheesy, rhyming poem each day along with a simple gift. Initially, I wanted to do this just to help Danielle feel admired. But the thought of asking Danielle on a date for that Valentine’s weekend persisted. The only question was how to do it without revealing my identity.
Shortly before leaving the first poem and gift on her apartment doorstep that Monday, the idea came. I created a new email account called “daniellesadmirer@hotmail.com.” In my poem—written on an index card—I asked her on a date for Valentine’s Day and gave her the email address so she could respond.
Before going to FHE that night, I pulled up the email account to see if Danielle had replied. She had! She even wrote her response in a poem. The rest of the week as her secret admirer was a joy, and the date was a blast. After 21 years of marriage, I’m still admiring her, only now not so secretly.
Rolling the Dice
By Jana Burton Mendes (BS ’05), Sandy, UT
The summer after my sophomore year, my plans of attending the BYU Jerusalem Center were thwarted when the center temporarily closed because of unrest in the region. Not wanting to let go of a summer adventure, I joined two of my roommates on a three-week whirlwind tour of Europe with dozens of other young adults from around the world. Among the friends we made was a grad student from Edmonton, Alberta, named Jason, with whom we would play card and dice games in the evenings. At the end of the tour, we all exchanged emails and wrote our testimonies in a copy of the Book of Mormon for him.
Shortly after getting home, we began emailing, sharing stories of growing up, hopes and plans for the future, and funny or embarrassing experiences. He also shared things he was reading in the Book of Mormon. And we continued playing dice games via email. Whenever I had the chance, I would go to the computer lab in the library, roll my dice, and send the results to him in an email—it took weeks to complete a single game.
He drove to Utah to attend general conference with us in October, and my roommate and I flew to Edmonton for his baptism over Thanksgiving break.
Five years, two missions, and hundreds of emails later, he moved to Utah for a PhD program at the University of Utah, and we began dating officially. We were married in June 2006. He printed and bound copies of all the emails we had written, a gift I treasure to this day.
Call for Stories: One Scoop, Please
With a 71-percent increase in size, the new Creamery on Ninth is serving up scoops, seating first dates, and feeding freshmen. The old building closed its doors after 25 years as a source of sweet confections and campus connections. If you have a sweet Creamery memory, please share your story. Deadline: June 5.
Y Magazine pays $50 for stories published in First Person. Send anecdotes of up to 300 words to firstperson@byu.edu. Submissions may be edited for length, grammar, appropriateness, and clarity.
