For some couples, it was love at first sight. Others started out as friends. And some met in a moment of wild fate ripped straight out of a Nora Ephron movie. 

No matter how it happened, people love to share the stories of the moment they met their significant other. Their eyes light up and their smiles widen when given the opportunity to tell “the moment they knew.”

Here are three couples from our neighborhood proving that the Meet Cute doesn’t just happen in the movies.  

Suzan Sprinkle had no interest in joining her friends for after-work drinks on a spring day in 2000. Still, she agreed to show up to La Calle Doce for 10 minutes just to say hello.

 She’d be undergoing major surgery the next week and would be knocked off her feet for the next month.

On the other side of town, Phil Sprinkle found himself berated by a coworker — a friend of Suzan’s friend  —  inviting him to tag along, too. He agreed to show up, wave and head home.

But once Suzan and Phil saw each other, neither was keen on ending the evening. 

“I saw him and it was like the universe went ‘you’re supposed to be together,’” Suzan says. “Every 10 minutes my brain would go ‘ding ding ding, you need to turn and talk to other people at this table.’” 

Family jokes that at the time of meeting, Suzan had been divorced for 10 minutes while Phil had been divorced for 10 years. While he’d had no prior interest in dating, he was “captivated” by Suzan who talked about “substantive” things like her passion for working with special-needs children. 

“I just loved what she was about,” he says. 

The next day, Suzan and Phil each asked their respective friends to track down the other’s phone number. They went on three dates in a week.

When Suzan’s surgery rolled around the next week, Phil baked her a pie — now known as the infamous “love pie” —  and brought it to the hospital. Word of the pie spread among the hospital nurses who stopped by Suzan’s room for a slice, and to share their approval of the match. 

While dating, Suzan and Phil enjoyed “mundane things” like selecting a recipe for dinner, grocery shopping and cooking together. 

“We fell in love in the kitchen,” Suzan says. 

They were married in 2001. The marriage was a bright spot that “came out of a dark place,” she says. Her former partner had been abusive, and her mother didn’t support Suzan’s second marriage. On the day of their wedding, Suzan warned Phil he “didn’t have to go through” with it. 

“I didn’t think twice about it being any other way,” he says. 

While Phil says he wishes he’d met Suzan earlier in life, the couple has fit a lifetime of experiences into their 22 years of marriage. 

They spent a month in East Africa last summer, and have been to Turkey five times. For several years, they hosted exchange students from around the world in their East Kessler Park home. 

Now retired, they are passionate about serving as a “conduit for Oak Cliff giving,” volunteering their time to organizations helping individuals struggling with homelessness and mental health issues.

Just as they cooked throughout their relationship to show their care for each other, they now cook meals to support those in a rough part of life. During the January freeze, Suzan cooked home-made mashed potatoes for 100 individuals sheltering from the cold. 

“Love and passion has to have somewhere to go,” Suzan says. “Our love story, I’m deeply appreciative for it because it allows us to take our love and give it to others.”

As the Vice President of the School for the Talented and Gifted’s 2008 class, Claudia Sandoval was tasked with organizing her 10-year high school reunion. 

And while planning the reunion, she’d heard chatter about a guy named Ben Mackey.

“We’d all heard about this new young principal, and we were like, ‘Who is this guy?’” Sandoval says. 

“He’s cute,” Mackey adds. 

“We did not say that,” Sandoval says. 

Mackey was invited to the reunion even though he’d taken the admin role in 2013, years after Sandoval’s class had graduated. But he’d declined the invitation, planning to go to a cousin’s wedding instead. 

Several hours before his departure, Mackey’s flight was canceled with no option to rebook until the following week. With his weekend plans down the drain he figured he’d attend the reunion.

That night he met Sandoval, and the two bonded over wanting to develop a stronger alumni network for the school. Mackey was “immediately impressed” by her smarts — at the time, she was serving on the Cockrell Hill City Council and was the youngest person elected to office in Dallas County.  

They met the next week for coffee to discuss alumni outreach efforts. Three hours later, they were talking about the houses they’d each purchased that year. Sandoval’s house was not liveable and needed a lot of work, but she invited Mackey to see it in person. That afternoon, while exploring the house, Mackey asked Sandoval on a date. 

She said no. She had a boyfriend.

“Pretty soon afterward,” though, she was single, and reached out to Mackey for “another attempt.” The invitation for dinner fell through, and that seemed like that.

Until February 2019, when they saw each other twice in a week at a women’s march and the Annual Point-in-Time Count. Each event had thousands of people in attendance, but Sandoval and Mackey found themselves standing right next to each other. 

“It took a lot of work to find her and plant myself in front of her,” Mackey jokes.

With the timing finally right, they started dating soon after. They were long distance for several months after Sandoval moved to Austin for graduate school that fall, but when the pandemic started during her spring break in 2020, she moved back to Dallas for good. 

During that time they enjoyed at-home date nights and virtual dates with friends. In June 2020, Mackey proposed to Sandoval on the porch of her Cockrell Hill home — the same place he’d first asked her on a date the year before. 

“When she had finally texted me to go on a date in January, I knew I was going to marry her if she was into it,” Mackey says. 

Wanting to avoid the chaos and uncertainty of a pandemic-era wedding, Mackey and Sandoval got married in November 2020 at the Catholic church she grew up attending. Less than a dozen immediate family members were in attendance, and over 100 friends watched the ceremony via Zoom. 

That night, they ate tacos at Sandoval’s sister’s house. 

“I never understood when people say, ‘When you know, you know.’ And now I get it,” Sandoval says. “By the second date, it was very clear.”

In their first three years of marriage, Sandoval and Mackey have prioritized traveling and fixing up Sandoval’s house, “a 1912 craftsman that hasn’t been touched since 1912,” which they hope to move into soon. They delight in antique shopping and rummaging through estate sales. And their fur child, a 3-year-old chow/pit mix named Chuy, accompanies them on many of their adventures. 

Sandoval now works in government consulting while Mackey is a Dallas ISD trustee. In 2023 Sandoval’s high school class celebrated their 15-year reunion, and once again, Mackey was in attendance. This time, as the class Vice President’s husband. 

2/14/24: A previous version of this story inaccuratly reported that Sandoval was the President of her high school class. Sandoval served as Vice President. 

Back in 1988, Theresa Ruiz spent her Friday nights at the Bronco Bowl. She’d pop in her striking blue colored contacts, throw on some lipstick, and hit the lanes with her 11-year-old daughter in tow. 

And it was her daughter, Julie, who came up to her one night and said “that guy over there thinks you’re cute,” before pointing at Nazario Ruiz. 

“We were bowling in the same area and I noticed her eyes,” he says.

Every Friday night after that, Theresa would find herself more excited than usual for her weekly bowling. 

“I think he’d get excited too, that we would be seeing each other. I looked forward to it, and then I started kind of fixing myself up a little bit,” Theresa says. 

One night, Theresa asked Nazario to give her a ride home and was surprised when he declined. She persisted, even after he confessed he was ashamed of his car — a cherry red, 1977 Monte Carlo that was so beat up friends called it “the piñata.” Theresa was won over by Nazario’s humility.

“That was it. When he told me about his car, I just fell in love with him,” she says.

They began dating in November, and moved in together in January 1989, blending their families. Nazario had three sons from a previous marriage, and Theresa had a son and daughter. Theresa and Nazario decided to get married that fall, after she became pregnant with a son.

They were married in their Kidd Springs home that November, and a week later she gave birth. 

Theresa’s lifelong priest declined to officiate the wedding, saying she had a habit of being impulsive. But a few years later, after giving birth to their daughter, Theresa and Nazario had shown it was the real deal.

They had a second wedding at Theresa’s childhood church.

“It meant a lot to me that I had finally met someone I could share my faith with,” Theresa says. 

Thirty-four years later, Theresa describes their relationship as full of laughter. But they “fought like cats and dogs” in the beginning.

“You have to give up some and adapt to a new life,” Theresa says. “I’ve learned not to be so selfish. I was pretty bad, but I think we both have learned to compromise.”

Theresa is the talkative, strong-willed one in the relationship, but Nazario likes it that way. 

“She’s always the one to say ‘Let’s do this,’ and I follow,” he says. “She has a good heart.”

Theresa and Nazario are semi-retired, and spend their time with their grandchildren who live nearby, traveling with family or driving around in Theresa’s cherry red Mustang convertible. They’ve been on trips to Canada, Mount Rushmore, Disney World and Hot Springs, and hope to continue their expeditions as they near retirement. 

“We just enjoy life,” Theresa says. “I love him, and he loves me.”