Love will surprise you. It’s not always a pleasant surprise, unfortunately, but it will surprise you, and it will keep surprising you for a long time.
But for all the consternation and confusion that can come along with it, the joy that love brings is worth it. And more often than not, you get a good story out of it, too, the kind that most couples never get tired of telling. Just look at Natalie and Austin Tatman, whose storybook romance is downright amazing.
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Natalie and Austin were inseparable pretty much right from the start.
“We just automatically became best friends and our parents realized it,” Natale told People . “It’s strange when you’re that age — you don’t usually hang out with the opposite sex. But from when we were 2 until we were 5, we were constantly together.”
Of course, their memories of their early days are fuzzy, but their parents remember a special bond between the two.
“I have very faint memories, but our parents have told us many stories,” she said. “Like on Halloween in 1999, Austin held my hand in the car on the way to trick-or-treating. Those little things that our parents tell us, where they knew, ‘This is insane that they’re interacting like this.'”
However, it wouldn’t stay that way, unfortunately.
When Natalie was 5, her parents got divorced and she and her mom and siblings moved away from Florida to Connecticut.
She can still remember her last day with Austin as kids, making Rice Krispy treats together. But, naturally, she and Austin lost contact — but she never fully forgot her best friend, either.
She would occasionally ask her mom if Austin remembers her, too. “She would say, ‘If you remember him, then he remembers you,'” she told Today .
One day, when she was 17, Natalie got to flipping through her mom’s address book and stumbled across Austin’s name.
“I knew his last name started with a T, but I don’t know why — I still have no idea to this day why — I went to his name out of all the names that were in there. This thing was full,” she said.
So, Natalie decided to look Austin up on Facebook.
Despite having no mutual friends, she still had no trouble finding him — she instantly recognized his face and sent him a message.
Turns out, he did indeed remember Natalie and all the fun they’d had together. And, as a bonus coincidence, he still lived just 10 minutes away from Natalie’s father in Florida, so when she went to visit him, she and Austin could meet up in person.
“Ever since that time, we’ve been together,” she said. “It was like the second I saw him, it was a friendship that had come back to life instantly.”
And it didn’t stop at mere friendship, either.
“We both knew we were in love with each other after being on our second date,” Natalie said.
But for at least a year their romance had to be of the long-distance variety while they both finished up high school. When college came along, the both went to Florida institutions, Austin at the University of Florida and Natalie at the University of Central Florida.
Four years later, after they were done college, and five after reuniting, Austin proposed.
And their parents were all for it. “Both sets of parents were so supportive when we first reconnected,” Natalie said. “They were just as excited, if not more excited, than we were. They were both over the moon about us getting together.”
At their wedding, the pair decided to recreate an old photo of them on a red toy jeep, only with a real Jeep.
The Jeep, as well as photos from their childhood together, became themes at the wedding.
“We had a storyline and a display of our pictures in order,” Natalie said. “As amazing as our story is, I didn’t want it to be the focal point of us being together … we have this amazing story but the story isn’t what kept us together for 7 years since we’ve reconnected.”
