Kimberly and Dane Windsor

When a boy asks a girl for her number in Anthropology Class … I had no expectations to become Indiana Jones and scour ancient sites for precious artifacts and outrun a treacherous boulder to escape with my life and a small gold monkey statue. I had to fulfill a general education requirement, and it sounded like an interesting course. I started school exhilarated and with a sense of freedom I never had before! I wanted to try new things, meet new people, and get the full college experience. So I enter Ron Wallace’s class as a bright-eyed and excited college student, ready to experience whatever life wanted to throw at me that summer. I had no idea the universe had worked out placing my future husband behind me, and giving us “a meet cute” that would change my life forever. I was discussing plans to go to a local bar with a friend, and that’s when he chimed in, “Hey, we are planning to go there too (no they weren’t by the way). Can I get your number?,” I thought, why not? So we meet up at the bar, share a kiss, and I call my mom at 3 a.m. (maybe a little tipsy) saying I met my future husband. It wasn’t rush to the altar by any means. We were inseparable from the day we met. “Dane and Kim” became a known entity among our friends and Greek brothers/sisters with Delta Upsilon and Alpha Xi Delta. You didn’t really get one without the other. But college is a crazy whirlwind of finding one’s self, experiencing the ups and downs of growing up, and trying to figure out your path. Sometimes it’s hard to do all that and become an independent person while in a serious relationship. We had our rough patches for sure, but something inside us never really allowed us to give up on each other. We knew inside this was a special love, and it was going to stand the test of time, no matter what obstacle course we put it through. Well, we survived graduation. Dane received his bachelor’s degree after studying mechanical engineering, and I earned a bachelor’s studying business and marketing. I also obtained my MBA in 2010. We struggled to find jobs as most people did during those years during the job market recession, but were able to find roles in companies that took us to two separate places: Minnesota and South Florida. Dane did six months job training during January in Minnesota (one of their coldest winters on record), and I headed to Fort Lauderdale to work at Motorola. We made it work, and eventually bought a house in Pompano Beach, Florida, got engaged, and had an amazing wedding in Marco Island, Florida. Now, we live in Dallas, Texas. We have careers we are proud of, a home we love, and most importantly a little boy who keeps us in stitches and another little boy expected to arrive any day now (I write this as I am 38 weeks pregnant). We are so blessed to still have our college pets, Chewie (a Lhasa apso) and Toulouse (a cat), in our lives and getting to experience our children. Looking back on it, UCF did more than just give me a degree — it gave me my whole life. I am so grateful for the friendships, the experiences, the obstacles I had to overcome, and for bringing Dane into my life. Black and gold truly runs through us, and we are so blessed to have had those experiences, and meet each other on that amazing campus. GO KNIGHTS!!!