By Jae-Ha Kim
Chicago Sun-Times
September 26, 1999
If you’re a 16-year-old boy and a pretty blond girl picks lint off of you, the first thing you might think is, “She likes me!”
At least that’s what ran through Derek DeBoer’s mind when Anne Dudek started picking lint off his sweat shirt on the first day of Spanish class.
“I was like, `Who is this?’ ” Derek recalls. “I turned around and started talking to her. That was 10 years ago, and we’ve been together ever since.”
Anne says she remembers that day. But she also says her only intention was to pick lint off him.
“I didn’t have a crush on him at that point, and it wasn’t like I was trying to hit on him,” Anne says. “I probably would’ve done it for anyone who was sitting in front of me. But the more I got to know him, the better I liked him.
“But we didn’t start going out right away. By the time he expressed that he liked me, I was dating someone else. So we were friends for about a year before we started dating each other.”
The two went to homecoming dances, proms and graduation together. Like most young couples, they broke up several times in their relationship. But unlike many couples, they got back together – usually within a week or two of the breakup.
So none of their friends or family was surprised when – after a seven-year courtship – the couple married in 1996 . . . at Disney World in Orlando, Fla.
“We had planned on having a big, 200-plus wedding up here,” Derek says. “Then it just started to get insane. We decided that we wanted to have a wedding where we’d get to have a great time and not have to worry about everything. They have this wedding pavilion at Disney World and they took care of all the details. We didn’t have to do anything.”
And before the question could even be asked, Derek answers, “No, Goofy didn’t marry us. There were no cartoon characters there.”
Though they have traveled to exotic vacation spots such as Aruba and St. Martin, Disney World holds a special place in their hearts. After Derek’s parents took the young couple there for a weekend trip, Derek and Anne began thinking of it as “their place.”
Making time for each other isn’t as easy as it used to be during their school years. Both 26, Anne works the midnight shift as a nurse in Munster, Ind., where the couple live. Derek works a more usual shift at his dream job: He was hired three months ago by Walt Disney Attractions to be its Midwest Marketing Manager.
So when they do get to spend time together, it’s often the little things that mean the most. The other night, they rented a video . . . and never got around to watching it.
Dreams really can come true.
