The Inside Scoop on our Dating Experiences as Widows

Love has a way of finding us when we least expect it.

We delve into our personal dating experiences and the remarkable stories of how we met our husbands-in-this life. From chance encounters to unexpected synchronicities, these stories highlight the power of serendipity staying open to possibilities.

Join us as we share some crazy coincidences and the dating advice or widow-wisdom we share like:

• Paying attention to those signs and synchronicities
• Opening that “dating door” and walking through it if it feels right
• And much more!

Also, Melissa confirms (again) that she has literally “no game” when it comes to dating and Kim shares the dream she had that was the “clincher” in her getting remarried.

Listen to the Full Episode

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Episode Transcript

Melissa: Welcome back to the Widow Squad Podcast. Melissa Pierce here, and I’m with my fellow Widow Squad podcast hosts Kim Murray and Jen Zwinck.

In a previous episode, we were chatting a little bit about dating and how to know when you’re ready. And right now, we want to dig a little further into our personal dating experiences and how we met our husbands-in-this-life.

So, Jen, I’m going to put you on the spot. You get to go first.

What was that like for you?

Jen’s Unforgettable Love Story: How a Letter Found After 20 Years Led to a Lifelong Connection

Jen: Okay, I’ll go first. So my now husband is Doug, and we actually met in high school. He was living in Michigan at the time because he’s from Ann Arbor. I live in Louisiana, and I was living right outside of New Orleans.

One August weekend in 1992 Doug came down to New Orleans for this big church conference. It was a youth gathering that we had for Lutheran churches around the country. So, he flew down with his church group, and the very first night of this conference was a concert. His church group was walking down the aisle one way, my church group came the other way. And we met right in the middle of the seats. We sat next to each other, and we met on that first night of the conference. We spent the next three days together. I was 16, and he was 17. We were teenagers; we were kids. We were having fun. It was a church thing.

When we left that last day, Doug got back on the plane to go back up to Michigan, and he wrote me a letter while he was on the plane. He had two friends with him on the plan and one was on the left and the other one was on the right. The one friend on the left was like, “you’re never going to see that girl again. Don’t worry about it. Don’t even bother writing a letter.” The other guy said, “write her the letter, dude. She’s a cool girl.”

So Doug is sitting there scribbling this letter on the plane. He wrote me a five-page letter, front and back, saying things like the sweetest things. Just, things like I never believed in love at first sight. And, going on and on about where he was from, his church that he goes to, his high school, where he’s going to college, his plans for the future. I mean, he told me his favorite food, his favorite band, everything in this letter. And then he mailed it to me.

I remember getting the letter when I guess it was like, a week later, I got the letter in the mail. But this was 1992 so there was no Internet. There was no way for me to even call him. I could call him, but it was like, $2 a minute to make a long-distance call. Okay. I didn’t have a job at the time. He was going off to college. Michigan, to me, was on the other side of the world. I thought, I am never going to see this guy again in my life.

So fast forward, and Brent was killed. I sold my house. My life was all in upheaval. I had two storage units that were packed with my house stuff. Claire and I were living with my parents in their above garage apartment. My mom was helping me go through some things, and she came across a box of bills from the house that I had just sold. It was bills from AT&T and just insurance bills and stuff. She found this letter that said “Jennifer.” And it had a heart over the eye. And she thought, oh, it doesn’t look like it belongs in here. So she took the letter, and put it on my dresser.

I didn’t know that she had found this letter. But a few days later, I was cleaning up, I was dusting, and I found the letter that she had put on my dresser. And I opened up the letter and I sat down and I read it. I read all of the nice things that he was saying. And the thought in my head was, oh, somebody loves me. I got to the end of it and I thought, when did I get this letter? Like, how did this even get here? It’s crazy. I don’t know. My house was in the Katrina hurricane. I had 6ft of water. This letter must have been in a box with my high school stuff up in the attic. It had been moved around a million times in the last 20 years, and somehow it ended up on my dresser at that time.

After I read the letter I thought, I’m going to get in touch with him. He signed it with his last name. It didn’t just say love, Doug. It said, Love, Doug Zwinck.  And remember, he had told me everything about himself and where he was going to be. So, we have Facebook now. I looked him up on Facebook and I messaged him, and I wrote, “I don’t know if you remember coming down to New Orleans when you were in high school. I just found a love letter from you, and I thought you might like to see it and see what your 16-year-old self wrote”

This was like a Sunday night, I think he wrote back to me right away. He was on his phone or whatever. And he wrote back, and he said, “I absolutely remember you, Jen.” And so that kind of took my breath away when he said that. So, we’re messaging on Facebook. And then he said, “well, let me get your number and then we can take this to texting.”  And then he made some silly comment about his smooth move with getting my number. So then we started texting. And then a few days later, I think he called me.

I couldn’t tell anything about him on Facebook. I had no idea at the time he was living in Chicago. We were talking back and forth just for, I guess, about a month. And then he said, “we should try and get together.”  So at the time, I had to tell my parents that I had a date with a guy in Chicago. Could you please watch Claire? Because I’m going to fly up to Chicago and go out on a date. That went over really well.

Melissa: Yeah. Did they put a tracker on you?

Jen: I booked a flight for a Saturday afternoon. So I got up there probably at 6:00 PM. And my flight was leaving the next morning at like 11:00 AM. I didn’t know how this was going to play out or what was even going to happen, but when I got there, it was amazing. We had such a great time and just instantly connected again. We had so much fun.

I came home and I thought, okay, this guy is going to be in my life. This guy is going to be around for a while. And I just knew. I just did. I’m like Chicago, New Orleans. The distance thing didn’t matter. I said, he’s the one. I just had that feeling. We dated for ten months and got engaged. And we were engaged for ten months. And then we got married. So the other interesting part of this story is that we had decided our wedding date because of Claire’s school schedule, and we had to pick certain dates and kind of narrow it down.

We decided on August 5, 2017. And that specific date was 25 years to the day that he wrote that letter. We didn’t realize it at the time. We had booked the wedding. We had made all the arrangements. And then we started to go back and look at the dates. The actual date. It was 25 years to the day of him writing that letter.

Kim: That’s crazy.

Melissa: That is cool. We got to get a numerologist on here.

Kim: Yeah, we’ve got to figure that out.

Melissa: What those numbers mean.

Jen: Yeah. It’s been quite a crazy ride and lots of synchronicities that happened with us. And it’s been so great, so unexpected.

All right, well, girls, what about you?

Kim: Well, I want to say, first of all, I love that story, and I think it’s amazing. And I love the synchronicities, and I love how you’re open to the synchronicities too. And again, we talk about this all the time, about being open to possibilities, even when you don’t know what’s in store for you. You just don’t know. And if you just keep walking forward and opening those doors, you have no idea what’s on the other side. So, yeah, that was definitely meant to be.

Jen: Yes. One thing I have to say, when you said that, it just reminded me, because when I was messaging him on Facebook, which is a pretty bold move for me, like, that’s not something I would normally do. I don’t know what made me do it. Look him up on Facebook and actually message him. It’s kind of out of my character, but I did it. And as I was going to hit enter to send him that message, of course I paused and I was like, what am I doing? And then I said, I’m not going to marry this guy. It’s not like I’m going to marry this guy. And I hit enter.

Melissa: Yeah. There’s like, a boldness there like, you kind of have this new thought that I’ve been through the worst thing in my entire life. I can press a button and see what happens.

Jen: It’s not like I’m going to marry this guy. Boom. And then I hit it, and wow. Two years later, we’re married.

Melissa: Oh, my gosh.

Kim: The universe had other plans. Yeah.

Melissa: Oh, Kim, I want to hear your story.

When Fate Intervenes: The Remarkable Coincidences in Kim’s Journey to Love

Kim: If you listened to the previous episode, we were talking about how I had been asked out on a date, sort of kind of asked out on a date by a mutual friend, well, really the father of one of my son’s friends. But it didn’t work out. So that’s not the story, but the story was that that opened up the possibility in my mind that dating could be an option.

So I was talking to my neighbor and told her that I thought I might be ready to date, and she had somebody that she wanted me to meet. So when it became real, like she had somebody she wanted me to meet, then I started to balk and kind of say, “no, I’m just kidding, and I’m not serious. Let’s just table that discussion.” She was very nice. She just kept bringing it up occasionally over the next few weeks until I thought that maybe it would be a good idea, because if you’ve heard me say before, I wanted to get the first date after the death hump over with. So I wanted to jump that hurdle. And I thought, okay, maybe this is my hurdle. Maybe I just agreed to go out with her friend. It was her husband’s coworker. Agree to go out with her husband’s coworker, get that date over with, and then I’m good to go. So I had every intention of making this the first date after the death hump. And I had an exit strategy. We could meet for coffee and I could just say, “I’m sorry, I thought I was ready. I’m not ready.” I mean, I had it all planned out, right?

So she gave Tom my phone number. He called me just to introduce himself and to talk. We were on the phone for probably an hour on that first phone call. Very nice man, very easy to talk to. And he was actually asking me questions about Mark and how he died and what I was doing. And he knew I took over Mark’s business. So he’s asking me about the business. How many times did people not want to talk about your deceased spouse? How many times did they avoid talking about it? Well, he didn’t. I mean, right out of the gate, he’s asking me questions about him, and do you mind if I ask how he died and how did you handle that? And I’m like, who is this unicorn I’m talking to?

Right?

Like, this is not normal with people. I felt very comfortable talking to him because he just was easy to talk to. He asked if we could meet, and I said yes, let’s just meet for coffee. Because like you said, Jen, I’m not sure how this is going to go. I’m not giving him my home address. He’s not picking me up. I’m going to meet him at the coffee shop. It’s a very quick meeting. Remember, I had an exit strategy. So I was going to go have coffee, tell him that I couldn’t date him because I was not ready. Yada. Yada. Well, that’s not how it turned out.

We met for coffee, and we started talking. Everything was great. Then we went to lunch after our cup of coffee and just continued talking. So my brain was saying, what the hell do you think you’re doing? Get out now. And my heart was saying, you cannot risk this again. Please leave the restaurant. Please go. Just don’t risk getting hurt again. And then my gut was saying, it’s just coffee. Give the man a chance. Because I wanted to bolt. I wanted to bolt. But I was like, okay. So I have voices in my head. Not really, but kind of like an inner committee. I have an inner committee.

Melissa: Inner committee. I like that better.

Kim: Yeah. And I’m trying to decide like, which voice do I listen to? Well, I listened to my gut. He asked if he could go out again, and I said, sure. So we went out again. So as we’re going on these dates and these first few dates, I find out we have a ton of things in common. And he is actually quite a bit like my deceased husband. They don’t look at all alike, but the things they like and their mannerisms and the way they say it was weird. It was just a very weird coincidence that kept popping up in our conversations.

As an example, after a couple of dates, when he was at my house, there was a picture of my dog on the piano. And it was a long-haired dachshund. And she died the same year that Mark died. But I still had her picture on my piano. So, Tom said, is that a dachshund? I said, “yeah, that’s Lucy, our dachshund. She died a couple of years ago, the same year that mark died.” And he said, “well, I have a dachshund.” I was like, “what?!”

So, backing up when I first met Mark, he had a dachshund dog. He was a single man with a dachshund. Not many men I knew had dachshunds. I don’t know. I mean, it was just a thing. So he was a single man with the dachshund. Then I meet Tom and he’s a single man with a dachshund. I was like, how does this happen? It just seems so weird to me, right?

Jen: That is different.

Kim: I’m like, is this coincidence? So we’re having dinner one night and he says he’s divorced, he has adult children, etc. So my name is Kimberlee Anne. And he was talking about his ex-wife, and her name is Kim also. I said, well, she’s not Kimberly Ann, is she? And he said, well, as a matter of fact, she is. We spell our names differently, so I knew that we weren’t spelled the same, but I’m like, what are the odds, right?

He was born in Flint, Michigan. I was born in Flint, Michigan. I mean, we just kept going on and on and on about all these coincidences. He had said he liked vintage things. He likes old signs. He likes things you would find in a flea market. Well, Mark did, too. And when we were finishing our basement in our house, Mark had mentioned that he wanted to have jukeboxes and vintage things in the basement, and he was really interested in having an old gas pump in the basement. We never got around to decorating the basement like that. Okay. We had young kids, so you know how that is. You’re busy, things you can’t get done, everything you want to get done.

When I met Tom, he had vintage signs in his basement, and he had a jukebox, and he had a gas pump. So when I went down and saw his basement and I saw that gas pump, I was like, oh, yeah, this isn’t random. No, this is not random. How do you explain to a man that you have gone on a couple of dates but don’t know that well, and he doesn’t know you that well? That, uh, by the way, the universe is working in our favor just in case you didn’t know. We are being divinely supported. So I had to be really careful in the beginning. Like, how much do I share?

It was like, oh, my gosh, I don’t even know. But it kept going on like that. It really did. It kept going on like, more synchronicities and more, um, just synchronicities.

Jen: That’s crazy.

Kim: It’s crazy. So I actually wrote a story about this. It was published in one of the Chicken Soup for the Soul volumes. And my point to that story was, yes, I was divinely supported. And I believe that we were on a path to meet each other, whether we knew it or wanted to or not. That’s just the way that things worked out for us. But again, being open to the possibility, and my brain and heart saying, run, run, run. And my gut saying, give the guy a chance. Just let’s see where this goes without making any rash decisions.

I just had to really push myself forward with it, because my instinct and the comfortable thing to do would have been to say no and turn around and go home. But I kept that possibility open. Long story longer, that was my first date after the death of my husband, and we got married six years later. So,  never did have any other dates. I did have a lot of, people asking me, like, my girlfriends would say, “are you sure you don’t want to date anybody else? I mean, you haven’t even seen what else is out there, right? Like, you’re just going to stick with this guy?” And I’m like, I am 100% sticking with this guy. We are meant to be together, and not everybody understands the spiritual side of that. I don’t expect everybody to understand and I’m okay with what I know and what I believe. I’m like, but you don’t understand. This is and was meant to be. Yeah.

Melissa: You know, in your gut and you listen to your gut, but you know in your gut, this is meant to be. We are meant to be together. That’s it. That’s it. Yeah.

Kim: That’s it. That’s it. Yeah. It surprised a lot of people. It surprised us. He was really good with everything, with my timing and all that stuff. So, some coincidences still come up and you’re just like, man, I love the universe. I love the way this stuff unfolds. But you have to walk through the door. You have to open the door and walk through it.

Jen: You have to and pay attention to those things. Pay attention to the signs.

Melissa: Paying attention, that is key.

Melissa’s Leap of Faith: Embracing Possibilities and Finding Unexpected Similarities

Melissa: So as I mentioned in a previous episode, I was very curious about partnership and dating and whatever, and what did I want? I really dug into that for several months. I was about the 18-month mark, and again, timing doesn’t matter. Timing is all individual.

But, for me, I kind of woke up to the idea around the 18 month mark. And a really good girlfriend of mine said, “ what do you want and what does this guy look like?” I’m like, “I don’t know, some fuzzy character. I don’t know.” Yeah, it’s like, hey, um, I’m going to kind of challenge you or whatever to just write down a list. Don’t judge anything, but whatever comes to the top of your head, just write it down. What do you want in this person? How do you want to feel? Maybe what they look like. You can get as granular or as blurry or whatever as you want.

So I’m like, okay, yeah, I’ll try that. So college ruled notebook. Three pages. I just sat and wrote and wrote and wrote and wrote. And I had some weird stuff like, must be a good speller because it makes me crazy when people can’t spell correctly. I don’t know. That’s just one of my things. So that was at the top. Must, be taller than me. But I had some things on there, like has to respect how I parent my kids. Must be comfortable with my relationship with Dave because he is still part of me even though he’s not on this Earth anymore, he’s still part of my relationship. I wanted him to have a good relationship with his mom, because I think that tells a lot about somebody. At least for me, that was important.

 So I had like, three pages of all these things. Some of them were goofy, some not. And I just folded it up and put it in my dresser drawer. Because I felt like to me it was like, okay, it’s out there now. I kind of know what to look for if somebody crosses my path. It was kind of like a catalog order, almost.

A couple of months later, I was part of a Meetup group. So Meetup.com, that’s a great place to just meet people in general. Just male, female, whatever. Just whatever you want to do. And so I was part of, like, an activities group, so just different activities around Portland. And, every morning I’d take my kids to school, I’d drive them to school, and I’d pass by this restaurant that I always wanted to go to, but it was kind of fancy and I didn’t want to go alone. I was like, I want to go there, I’m just going to go there. But I never did. So on this meetup, there was a meet up that came up for twelve people to sign up to go to this restaurant, get a rooftop tour and a beautiful view of the city. You got to meet with the chef. And I’m like, oh my God, I’m going to do this.

So I signed up for it. There were twelve spots. I show up to the restaurant and I see this group of people and they all are like, super old. My immediate hit was like, gosh dang it. Oh, well, that’s okay. I can still relate and, uh, talk to these guys and this will be great. I’m here for the food and the chef and all this stuff. We’re all sitting down and we’re tasting all the wines and the food, and I’m talking to this gal next to me, and there’s this gentleman across the way and he’s talking to somebody else and says that he graduated from this high school in our area. And I’m like, oh, I graduated from there too. So I popped up like, “hey, I graduated there too. What year?” And it was the same year what we graduated. And I’m like, well, who are you? What’s your name? Because I didn’t recognize him at all and he didn’t recognize me. He told me his name and I’m like, “did you go to St. Anthony’s Catholic Church growing up?” And he’s like, “yeah.” I asked him, “were you in the boys choir?” He said yes. I said, “you were in choir with my brothers, and do you know my brothers?” He’s like, “oh, yeah, I know those guys.”

They went to Europe together. When they were little kids. So he was with my brothers on this Europe trip, singing for the Pope and all the things. And then we knew mutual people. But again, I have no game when he tells me later, like, he was interested and he got my phone number and my email and he emailed me, but I just did nothing with it because I’m like, oh, it’s nice to meet you, blah, blah, blah. Because I don’t know, I just wasn’t ready for that. I tucked that away, but I did kind of have a little tingles, like, oh, he’s interesting. I remember I called my mom and I said, “do you remember this boy? He’s a man now.” She’s like, “oh yeah, all his family is so nice,” and blah, blah, blah.

So then I went to another meet up, like a month or so later, and it was huge. There were like 100 people there. And I walked in and I looked at all the people, I’m like, uh, I want to go. This is too many people for me. I’m not ready for this. And he was there and he caught my eye and he waved to me. I’m like, “oh, hey.” So like, okay, I’ll stay. And I went down to talk to him. He bought me a glass of wine but then I saw another friend of mine there. So I’m like, “oh, okay, I’ll see you later.” my friend. I kind of ditched him because I just thought, oh, what a nice thing to do. He bought me a glass of wine. I had no idea what I’m doing. So like 20 minutes later, I found him and he was leaving. He’s like, “yeah, I’m going to go. This isn’t my scene.” And I said, “well, hey, wait a minute.” I suggested we go into this quiet corner. And for me with dating, I was all about you need to be real specific. So I said,
“are you asking me out on a date?” And if you are, tell me what time and day. Specific. I’m not going to ask you out. I’m not going to do anything. If you want to hang with me, then be specific. And so that first email that he sent me wasn’t like that. And I’m like, I am not asking anybody out. That is never going to happen.

So we go in this corner and we’re talking and stuff, and I’m like, “we should do something together. We should hang out or whatever.” And I broke my rule. We ended up going on a date a couple of weeks later. And he was the only guy I dated. He was the first guy I dated. And I would come home every time. We would kind of go out a couple of times and I would get my list out and I would start checking things off. 

Kim: He fit the bill.

And the weird synchronicity thing is, okay, so there’s the whole graduating high school, going to the same church. In Catholicism, you get confirmed when you’re about 14 or 15. I kept the program, and I saw we got confirmed together when we were 15. And then in our adult lives, when we were raising our kids, we lived on a street, like, two streets away from each other. Our kids went to the same grade schools. I walked my dog past his house a gazillion times and even now, we’ll talk about, “oh, I saw that concert when I was, you know, 16.” I’m like, “I was there, too.”

So our whole lives, we were kind of and I do believe because I did have conversations with Dave for support, because I’m like, “hey, I know you want the best for me. You’re not here on this earth anymore. But this is what I want. Help a girl out. Help me out.” And I just felt like I had this healthy conversation going on, one sided, albeit. But I do believe that he put us together, and a psychic told me so, too. But that’s another episode.

Kim: I believe that 100%. I have no doubt. No doubt in my mind.

Melissa: So it was all these crazy synchronicities. And we still have crazy synchronicities. Our families are really close, like, his family and my family, our moms are very close now. It’s just, like, everything I wanted, and I should go grab the list and see if I can check off more marks. Yeah. I was able to recognize him when he crossed my path and know that, okay, I kind of have proof because I have these three sheets of paper. You do?

Kim: I love that you asked Dave, though. I love that you asked him and that you felt like you were getting that support that you needed.

Melissa: Dave was my best friend, and so I knew that I was still on this earth and living and had a life to live and deserve to be happy in whatever that looked like. I know 100% he was behind all this.

Our Dating Experiences as Widows: Trusting Divine Support

Kim: I have one other story to share, if I can, because you’re making me remember this dream that I had. So I would do the same thing. I would talk to my husband and just try to figure things out in my mind. And I talk out loud, too. My kids think I’m crazy, but I do talk out loud sometimes. So I was with Tom, and I’m going through all the thoughts that we have as widows. Is this right? Am I doing the right thing? My brain, my heart, my gut. But I had a dream one night, and I was standing in the middle of the road, and Tom was on one side of the road and Mark was on the other. But I’m in the middle of the road, and I keep getting pulled to Tom’s side of the road. It was like he had a magnet or something in my dream. If you have dreams about your deceased spouse where they’re alive in your dream, it’s kind of crazy because you’re like, why are you alive? Because you’re dead. So why am I talking to you? Why am I dating somebody else when you’re alive? It’s a very weird dream.

So I’m in the middle of the road. I don’t know what to do. The magnet is pulling me towards Tom. I’m looking over to Mark in my dream and he said to me, “it’s okay, you can go.” I woke up that next morning and I was like, it’s going to be okay.

Not that I needed more signs or signals or whatever, but this is like, great. I had peace in my heart, in my mind and my soul, everything. I remember that dream vividly, you guys, this many years later, vividly. But I was also communicating with my deceased spouse, right?

Melissa: Absolutely.

Kim: They’re still around.

Melissa: They are here. We can’t wrap our brains around it, but I believe that they’re still here. Oh, gosh. I can’t stop the goosebumps. I just got waves and waves. Goosebumps. Oh my gosh. Yes. This has been really good. Oh my gosh. We do need to dig into just the things that we brought up, the numbers.

And whether you believe in psychics or whatever, I mean, I had support from them.

Kim: Yes, we all have support. We’re all supported.

Melissa: Yeah. Well, again, we got to wrap this up and we could talk for hours. So sorry. But we will have some awesome episodes upcoming. And we just really want to thank you for being here. I learned so much about you too. I feel like I know you. And then I keep learning more and more and more.