“She got my attention”

After talking to Juli that night long ago, Dale said he did not think much of it, as he believed she was a freshman and not his own age.

“We talked for a while, and she was — she got my attention, let’s put it that way,” Dale said. “And it seemed odd to me that she was interested in talking to me as much as we did that night.”

One of the fraternity’s traditions, to this day, is for new pledges to choose a “pledge parent” — a student in the fraternity who teaches new members the fraternity’s rules and mottos. Typically, Dale said, women would choose a pledge mother. That was not the case for Juli.

Juli’s friends were astounded that she wanted Dale for her pledge parent, but she said she chose him because he was nice and easy to talk to. Dale said he gladly accepted once she asked.

While reminiscing their relationship’s early days, Dale realized he was pretty “slow on the uptake,” as Valentine’s Day passed 10 days after their meeting and he did not “seize a golden opportunity.”

“I don’t think her interest in me had really occurred to me yet,” he said. “I was in disbelief that this terrific woman would take an interest in me.”

Even when there wasn’t a reason for the two to get together, Dale said he started to find reasons to go over to Juli’s apartment. He had a friend in her same apartment complex, and he decided one day to introduce them, even though they were on opposite ends of the building and had no reason to interact.

“And then I don’t know if she invited me, or if I showed up one evening. I think she invited me to come over one evening, and we hung out all evening there, and a romance was born,” Dale said.

Over the course of their time together at the UI, the couple would go to dinner at The Mill, the Brown Bottle, and Bushnell’s Turtle. Dale remembered walking under the lamplights in the Pedestrian Mall together to visit different bars and enjoy Iowa City’s nightlife.

Timeline by Meg Doster/The Daily Iowan

They would see movies at the Old Capitol Mall’s theater. Dale never said no to a movie Juli wanted to see, despite her favorite genres — chick-flicks and romance — not matching his own favorites.

He remembers plopping down into the theater’s plush, red seats almost every week to watch the top box office movies — at the time “Flashdance” and “An Officer and a Gentleman.”

Juli said her fondest moments of college were something minuscule — spending days with Dale in the Health Sciences Library.

Dale would tutor her in math and art, she said, but mostly algebra, causing some moments of extreme frustration for him.

“I think he threw a book at me once, because I kept asking him to explain why x equals three,” she said laughing and looking over at him.

“It wasn’t airborne!” Dale responded.

Eventually, it came time for Dale to graduate in May 1982. However, after meeting Juli and establishing a relationship, he decided to stay in college for one more year for her.

While their love story is unique, a study conducted by Facebook in 2013 showed that 28 percent of married graduates met their spouse in college.

He added that after meeting a woman he really liked, he never regretted spending another year at the UI.

“I could enjoy [college] a little differently and especially with her in my life,” he said. “I could really enjoy that last year of college as a year of college with not as many stresses, and also the euphoria that goes with a new relationship.”