Cindy Schroeder

cschroeder@enquirer.com

MILFORD –

This is the story of a boy, a girl and the role a school door played in their courtship.

It all started in 1976 when Tomi Smith pulled fifth-grade classmate David Jones off Pleasant Hill Elementary's playground and kissed him in the doorway to their Milford school.

Despite the kiss, the two never dated, and by high school, they'd gone their separate ways.

"But from that day and that first kiss as a kid, I never forgot her," David said..."I always wondered where she was and how her life turned out."

Flash forward to August 2009. David, who by then was living in Columbus, found Tomi on classmates.com and sent the Loveland resident a message. The two began conversing, and as David recalls, that's when the magic began.

"Right away, we both knew something very special was happening," Tomi said.

David never told Tomi that she'd been the first girl to kiss him. But for their first date on Oct. 17, 2009, he drove the divorced mother of two to their former elementary school – by then renamed Seipelt Elementary for its long-time principal – and walked her to the doorway.

"She didn't know why we were there," David said. "I told her that for 33 years I had always thought of her and that in this very spot when we were 10-years-old, she was the first girl to capture my heart. We kissed, and it was perfect."

On their second date, David took Tomi to dinner and gave her 33 long-stemmed roses, one for each year that he'd thought about her.

After a whirlwind courtship, the two knew they had found their soul mates.

On Thanksgiving Day 2009, David and Tomi once again returned to Pleasant Hill Elementary. The couple had regretted not getting a picture at the doorway for their first date, so this time David came prepared. He set a camera on the hood of his car and once again walked Tomi to the entrance of the school they'd attended as children.

"She thought I was taking a still shot picture," David said. "I actually had the camera on record."

With a diamond in his pocket, David got down on bended knee and asked the girl he could never forget to be his wife. A tearful Tomi said yes.

David found a "Have Bible will travel minister" who agreed to marry the two at the school on Valentines Day 2010.

"We got married in the doorway of the school where we first kissed so many years ago," he said. "Once I found her, it was like something in my life was no longer missing."

Now married 4 1/2 years, the two marvel at how they reconnected when their lives initially took such different paths.

After losing track of one another in middle school, Tomi dropped out of school their junior year when she became pregnant with her daughter. She stayed in the area to be near her Clermont County family, and a year later, she had a son. She had two failed marriages – the last one an abusive relationship that ended in divorce just months before she and David became reacquainted.

David attended Live Oaks his junior year to study drafting and engineering. At age 16, his father died, and his mother moved their family to Xenia, Ohio where she could get a better job. Now an engineer for Honda, David moved to Columbus in 1987, where he's lived ever since.

Through the years, David dated several women, but he never married. When his Milford High School class held its 20th reunion 10 years ago, he attended in hopes of running into Tomi, but she didn't show.

"I believe that every little thing you do in life happens for a reason," David said. "In 2004, Tomi and I never would have gotten together because she was married, and I was in a relationship."

Now the husband and wife who finish each other's sentences have but one request.

When relatives recently showed them an article about how the current Seipelt Elementary will be torn down once a new school is built, both were saddened to learn of its impending demise.

"I have just one favor to ask," David wrote in an email. "Can you put me in touch with the demolition crew and/or engineers in charge of the demolition? I really want one brick from the school where our lives began. (I would love to have the whole door actually). The brick is a tangible representation of our love's foundation."