Abbey and Kevin Gorsage celebrate their wedding day together on October 10, 2015.
It’s Valentine’s Day. Crowds of couples line the streets donning their classiest clothes. A shy little boy timidly gives the girl of his dreams some flowers. The few ill-prepared men race to salvage from the last few boxes of chocolates and rose bouquets. While most couples celebrate the holiday of love in some way, art teacher Abbey Gorsage and her husband don’t, something that she describes their relationship as “non-traditional in that tradition.”
“We go out to dinner or see movies and things like that all the time and we enjoy each other’s company on a regular basis,” Gorsage said. “We both don’t really see Valentine’s Day as a time where we have to do something to express our love for one another because we do that already.”
The pair’s relationship goes all the way back to their time in high school. However, at 16 their love for each other wasn’t love at first sight.
“As a high schooler, he wasn’t as social or extraverted. He was really quiet at first, but friendly,” Gorsage said. “He was the type of personality where you had to kind of get to know him before the other side of his personality really showed through. The kind of crazy, funny side.”
For them, the relationship sparked through their job at Red Robin. At the same time, they also began attending the same youth group. After that, their friends from work and church brought them closer together.
“We went to a fairly large high school similar to RBHS where you don’t know everyone you see in the hallway, but once you know them [from] somewhere in a different context you notice them at school more. We became friends that way and then started talking more,” Gorsage said. “It turned into one of those high school things where, ‘Oh, do you like him? Do you like her? Maybe you guys should date,’ with our friends kind of pushing us to go on a date together. So we [ended] up going on a few dates together, but it didn’t go much further than that when we were that age.”
Alumni Tatum Pugh, who graduated May 22, 2015, also met her boyfriend in high school. However, instead of going to different colleges like Gorsage and her husband, Pugh and her boyfriend both ended up going to the University of Missouri-Columbia.
“We dated all throughout high school and I ended up graduating a year early so we actually ended up going to the same college and are still dating today. It’s been a little over three and a half years now,” Pugh said. “We’ve always loved Columbia and are both pursuing careers in journalism so Mizzou made sense for both of us.”
For her, going to the same college as her boyfriend wasn’t something she did just to keep their relationship intact. Instead, she said it was a personal decision for her future.
“A lot of people assumed that I decided to graduate early so I could follow my boyfriend to college, which is not true. I made the decision to graduate early because I knew it was the best thing for myself, personally,” Pugh said. “I had the credits and I was honestly just very ready for a change of scenery and to start the next chapter of my life. Having him along for the ride was really just an added bonus.”