'I' VE ALWAYS BEEN A DREAMER'

It’s the kind of story that will rekindle belief in true love, the power of a promise and the persuasive nature of Facebook. However, it’s not a story about love at first sight, though it might just come with that fairytale ending of … happily ever after.

Most of all, it’s a story about hope and finding true love, even after you’ve stopped looking.

Way back before they shared the same last name, Dave and Lisa DeRoche knew each other only in passing. Both were students at Spencer High School. She was a graduate with the class of 1978, and he graduated in 1980. Their only real connection was that Dave was dating Beth Guarnieri, Lisa’s best friend at the time.

“We didn’t really hang out,” Lisa remembers, sitting at a small table in Fountain City Coffee on a warm November night. “I knew who he was, but that was about it.”

“I didn’t really think much about (Lisa) then,” Dave adds, grinning. “I was serious about Beth, so she’s pretty much all I thought about.”

Lisa had a boyfriend of her own, named Mickey. Both couples were serious in that wonderfully naïve, high school way. One night—perhaps it was Valentine’s Day—after dinner, Mickey gave Lisa a promise ring as a symbol of his love.

“I thought it was just the grandest thing ever,” she said, “and, of course, when you’re 18, getting a promise ring is pretty intense.” Around the same time that Lisa was slipping on her promise ring, Dave was walking into Service Merchandise on Macon Road (where Publix now stands). His stomach was filled with butterflies as he paid $19.99—money earned from working at Wendy’s and Shoney’s—for a promise ring he’d give to Beth. They’d been dating for eight or nine months, which was a lifetime for a high school sophomore.

“I was nervous,” he says. “She was this pretty older girl, and I didn’t want to mess it up. Plus … that was a lot of money back then for a kid making like $1.65 an hour.”

LIFE MOVED ON...

Both couples broke up, as high school sweethearts inevitably do. Dave graduated from Spencer High School and “got out” by joining the United States Coast Guard at 17. Beth’s family moved from Columbus to Alabama, to Germany to New York City. Lisa and Mickey eventually broke up, too, but she stayed in Columbus. “They all left me,” she says, a tinge of regret in her voice.

After he left the Coast Guard, Dave “never stopped” moving. Though he had a home in the Atlanta area, his second career building retail stores kept him on the road from California to Maine to Miami.

Everybody’s life simply moved along. They all got married and had families of their own. Despite her many moves, Beth and Lisa remained good friends. Dave’s parents and his little sister, stayed in the Columbus area, but he stayed on the road.

In a blink, 10 … 20 … 30 years went by, bringing with it heartache and hope, grandchildren and divorce, new experiences and old fears. Time takes its toll. It’s like the old Tom Waits song: … “memory's like a train, you can see it getting smaller as it pulls away. And the things you can't remember, tell the things you can't forget that history puts a saint in every dream.” With both having entered their 50s, Lisa and Dave, had faced certain painful truths about their romantic futures. “I’ve always been a dreamer. I’ve always been the happily ever-after girl,” Lisa says. “[Dave] and I had both been through difficult things, and especially at our age, you think, ‘So this is gonna be it for me, and I’m OK with that. I still believe the fairytale, but it’s too late for me.’” “Right,” Dave adds, “You just reach a point when you stop looking.” Then, in 2014, Lisa got a Facebook friend request from Dave DeRoche, whom she remembered only as “that guy Beth used to date.” She accepted the request and didn’t think anything else about it. Then, in September of that same year, after posting “one of those insightful quotes” people are always plastering on their Facebook pages, Lisa got a private message from Dave. “It sounded like she was coming from a dark place,” he says. “I just wanted to make sure she was alright.” Lisa was fine. Though the exact quote has long been lost, it wasn’t a cry for help or attention. She just liked the way it was worded. It’s also important to know that Dave’s not exactly savvy when it comes to the subtle ways of Facebook. In fact, he rarely ever looked at it. His little sister set the thing up. “I didn’t know how to put pictures up or anything,” he says. “I might be able to respond to something, but that was it.” Still, Dave, who only “barely” remembered Lisa, did reach out. Though the exchange was brief, they did swap cell numbers. “I’m still old fashioned,” Lisa says. “I want the man to make the first move.”

above- Dave and Lisa DeRoche visit old friend Beth and her husband Jeff Cox.

left- Beth and Lisa have been friends since high school

Which Dave did. On Sunday night, he texted Lisa, asking about her weekend.

“The rest is history,” she says. “From then on … we just knew.”

They talked a bit, visited each other a few times, went on a few trips—Dave has soothed his wanderlust just as Lisa seemed to have discovered hers—and in November 2015, they got married.

Given all the years in between, it’s hard not to wonder, what if … what if fate had set Lisa and Dave up instead of Dave and Beth. It’s something they joke about from time to time, but it’s hard to argue with the result, even if it took nearly 40 years.

“It’s hard not to think about how it might have been if we’d been together all this time,” Lisa says. “But life is never wrapped up that nice and neat. He’s had experiences, and I’ve had experiences that have made us who we are today.

“We reconnected when we were supposed to.”

Were that the end, it would be a sweet story. But this path to true love has one more unexpected turn.

PROMISE RINGS

It was April 2015. Lisa and Dave were returning to Columbus after a trip out West when they decided to visit Lisa’s old friend, and Dave’s high school sweetheart, Beth, who was living in Jacksonville, Ala.

During dinner, the ladies were talking about old times when Beth brought up something they’d done years before.

While talking on the phone one night, the conversation turned to promise rings and the boys who’d given them. Both girls still treasured the gifts but also felt guilty keeping them since they obviously didn’t wear jewelry from ex-boyfriends. So, they mailed the rings to each other.

“You know the promise ring I sent you was from Dave?” Beth asked over dinner.

Lisa’s jaw dropped. It was a coincidence so spectacular, it took a minute or two to process … the promise ring her best friend had mailed her all those years ago, belonged to the man she was now going to marry.

“It’s just too incredible,” Lisa says. “And if [Beth] hadn’t brought it up, I’d never have thought about it.”

Beth, by the way, is happy for them.

“If we ever needed proof, that’s pretty much it,” Dave says. “The promise is still there, I just made it a little early and to the wrong girl.”

Now that’s a happy ending. C