Lauren Christine Lockett sent Jordan Alexander Miller a text seeking clarity about their relationship on a Friday night in October 2022. They had lost touch during the last five years, but after reconnecting over several months, Ms. Lockett decided to initiate the “define the relationship” conversation, again.
“Talking to him at brunch, then at a dinner and the text conversations we had, I knew that he had matured in a lot of ways,” said Ms. Lockett, 29, who lived in San Francisco.
When Mr. Miller, who was living in Michigan at the time, received the text it was closer to midnight. He wanted things to go differently than the first time they talked about their relationship in October 2017.
“I lived with a lot of regret over the last like four or five years,” said Mr. Miller, 32. He took the weekend to draft a response but made the decision not to shy away from his feelings this time.
The two met in the fall of 2013 at Stanford, where she was a freshman studying history and he was a junior majoring in mechanical engineering. During new-student orientation, Mr. Miller welcomed her to the Ujamaa dorm, a student residency hall dedicated to the history and cultures of the African diaspora. Sparks didn’t immediately fly, but Ms. Lockett took note of the friendly “cute upperclassman,” she said.
They saw each other occasionally on campus, but they had their first real conversation at an Easter brunch event in 2017. They spoke about their shared love of sports and having big families back home. Mr. Miller is from Kansas City, Mo., and Ms. Lockett is a Houston native.
As Ms. Lockett studied for the LSATs that spring, Mr. Miller, a graduate engineering student living on campus, kept “popping up,” wherever she hung out, she said. Their bond grew over study sessions, cafeteria dinners and basketball games at the campus gym.
On the night of Ms. Lockett’s graduation in June, they sat on the roof of his dorm talking about their futures. Mr. Miller was headed to Michigan to work for General Motors, where he was an engineer for several years. In 2023, he was accepted into General Motors’ fellowship program, where he’s currently pursuing an M.B.A. at Stanford.
Ms. Lockett returned to Houston, where she interned for Amanda Edwards on Houston’s City Council while applying to law school. She graduated from Harvard Law School in 2021 and is now a corporate associate lawyer at Latham & Watkins in Menlo Park, Calif.
Though Ms. Lockett felt a spark beyond friendship, she assumed their time together just amounted to fun college memories. She was surprised when Mr. Miller kept in touch that summer of 2017. They talked frequently over FaceTime every Tuesday and Thursday, which they affectionately called “FTT.”
“I would say our conversations started to turn,” Mr. Miller said. “We weren’t addressing it directly by any means, but we would talk more about what we wanted in a partner or how many children we wanted.”
By October, Ms. Lockett decided she wanted to define the relationship during one of their FaceTime sessions.
Mr. Miller wanted to remain friends. “Obviously there were feelings here, but I wasn’t really ready to address them,” he said.
Ms. Lockett was disappointed but decided to move on, asking Mr. Miller to give her space. “I’m not standing around for somebody who can’t make up their mind,” she said.
In March 2022, Ms. Lockett sent Mr. Miller a text wishing him happy birthday — one of the few times they had communicated. When Mr. Miller came to Houston for a bachelor party in April, he asked to meet for brunch. Ms. Lockett, who returned to Houston to retrieve belongings for her move to the Bay Area, said yes with some reservations.
“I knew I was going to see him and it’ll be a good brunch, but I knew I was going to stay guarded,” she said.
At a dinner in July, Mr. Miller was in the Bay Area, where Ms. Lockett lived, and they caught up with a mutual college friend. Mr. Miller recalls a conversation at the table that put things in perspective.
When Ms. Lockett said she wanted an invitation to their future weddings something “clicked,” for Mr. Miller, he said. Instead of imagining her as a guest, he wanted her to be the woman in his life. By September, he ended his two-year relationship and they were a couple by October.
After nearly a year of dating long distance, during which Mr. Miller wrote monthly letters that reassured her of his commitment to their relationship, he moved to Menlo Park, Calif., in September 2023 for business school at Stanford. The following year, they moved in together near campus in Palo Alto, Calif., where they now live.
With help from Ms. Lockett’s younger sister, Lerah, Mr. Miller planned a surprise proposal disguised as a couple’s photo shoot on Stanford’s campus. As they strolled around the familiar paths snapping photos, Mr. Miller got down on one knee. Waiting at Hoover Tower on campus, her family stood by to surprise her again.
On March 29, the couple exchanged vows at Wheeler Avenue Baptist Church in Houston, with the Rev. Dr. Marcus D. Cosby officiating before 300 guests. The newlyweds made a grand exit in a classic Rolls-Royce, heading to their reception nearby at the Crystal Ballroom at the Rice hotel.
Nia Decaille is an editor on The Times’s Audience team, who also writes about culture and lifestyle.
The post A Post-College Romance With a Five-Year Intermission appeared first on New York Times.
