Bigday

Alabama native Lillian Quarles moved to Nashville in early 2008 to take a job with Vanderbilt University. Excited to be in a new town and meet new people, she allowed a friend to set her up on a blind date. “I had pretty low expectations, having been on a string of several bad dates, but decided, what the heck!” she says. Lillian met Craig Turman, who worked with Vanderbilt through his job at ISP Sports, at Jackson’s for drinks and a low-key dinner. To her surprise, they ended up talking all night and closing down the restaurant.

Louise Fitch, a product development manager for a wholesale home décor company, had a demanding work schedule that made dating slightly challenging. “I was traveling a lot, so it was hard to maintain any sort of relationship over a period of time,” Louise explains. She turned to Match.com to “weed out” prospective dates, and she found Shane Truett, a lawyer who devotes his spare time to the Tennessee Coalition to Abolish State Killing.

Kat Amano simply did not want to get married. “I was completely anti-marriage for a long time,” Kat, a production manager at a digital signage firm in the Gulch, admits. “I would go on long rants about how the institution of marriage is broken.”

Luckily, Terry Price changed her mind.

For you single girls out there who are getting a little impatient while waiting for your prince to come, Beth Fromm has some pretty straightforward advice for you: Be picky.

Megan Hayes, an event marketing representative with St. Jude, and Phillip Emmert, Director of Operations at ActivHealth, met during their junior year at University of Tennessee, Knoxville, when her sorority was paired up with his fraternity for a campus production called “All Sing.” “After many practices perfecting our Beach Boys montage, we became very good friends,” Megan recalls. After they started dating, music continued to play an important part in their developing relationship.

Catherine Davis and Chase Pattison met during their freshman year of college. Though they are both originally from Knoxville, they went to separate schools —Auburn and UT-Knoxville — and met through mutual friends. Two years later, both were in New York City for internships when Chase, who admitted to always having a crush on Catherine, finally asked her out. On one of their first dates, they went out to dinner with Chase’s sister and brother-in-law.

Summer Dyer was studying medicine at the University of Illinois when she met Doug Wirth, an architect student. “There were so many times over the years when Doug and I should have met!” Summer remarks. “We took the same chemistry class our first year of college, we lived in the same apartment building our junior year, and throughout college and grad school, he was roommates with a great high school buddy of mine.”

Ladies, one of the many great things about Nashville is that if you are hoping to run into someone again, chances are, you probably will. But you might have to be a little patient ...

Thais “Ty” Soares, a native Brazilian raised in New Jersey, first met artist Adam Hall when they were both students at Trevecca Nazarene University. “We never spoke during college, but I always thought he was super cute!” Ty admits.

There are those who believe in love at first sight, and there are those who believe in love after nearly 10 years of “sighting” each other.
    Take Courtney Grimes, an Atlanta native and Belmont graduate who currently works in the music industry. She met Frank Cuden in 1999 when she moved to Nashville to attend Belmont University. “We were acquaintances, but not close friends,” Courtney recalls.

In this modern dating age, there are many tools to help you find your soulmate. You can use online resources such as eHarmony or MySpace, you can get set up, or you can do a little of both, which is how Elise Joseph Yetton inadvertently found her husband.