It was during the summer of 1998 that a 15 year-old Aerial DeAnn Merritt met David Wayne Bullard Jr., 18. The two teens were attending a week-long Georgia Teen Institute at Oxford College of Emory University in Oxford.

Aerial was a student at Woodstock High School in Woodstock. David, a Hahira boy, had just finished high school a week earlier.

If not for the Georgia Teen Institute, the two may never have laid eyes on each other. In fact, Aerial, an alternate, was only able to attend the institute because one of her fellow Woodstock High School students had an emergency and could not go.

Aerial said. “Everyone there was so enthusiastic, and friendships with people from all over the state formed quickly. I started to get to know some of the folks from ... Lowndes High School ..., and, of course, my future husband was part of that team.”

The first time Aerial saw David he was buying a coffee mug in the Oxford College bookstore. (That exact same mug sits in their house today.) She said her first impression of David was a favorable one.

“I didn’t give him much more thought,” she said, “past my initial attraction to him because he was walking around with a girl, and they were talking like couples talk ...”

Aerial later found out that David and the girl had parted ways a few weeks earlier, although the girl was hoping for a reconciliation.

“I was a single man,” he said. “I had no intentions of pretending otherwise. Thankfully an absolutely delightful distraction came my way in the form of a vibrant, blonde girl whose smile quite literally filled the room ... Beautiful and smart, there are so few left in this world, or at least so few that would have found me interesting, let alone attractive.”

Aerial and David ended up in a communications class together. After class, they talked, went for a swim and laughed all afternoon.

“I found out that the girl in the bookstore was his recent ex, which brought a smile to my face,” she said. “I wasn’t thinking, ‘Oh jeez, this could be my husband one day!’ I was thinking, ‘He is so nice and maybe I can kiss him before the week is over.’ He still has the most beautiful lips I’ve ever kissed. But either way, it never entered my mind that our attraction and connection would last longer than this week.”

Aerial and David were inseparable the rest of the week. And then it was time for her to return to her home in Woodstock and him to return to Hahira.

“We traded information, which back then was just a landline number and a mailing address,” he said. “We said goodbye and went to load our respective buses. It was raining, so most of the sponsors and chaperones were in a hurry to get on the road. Our group’s bus was just about full when I saw her getting on her school’s bus. Our eyes met, and the unbelievable happened. We ran across the parking lot. I scooped her up, and we kissed like some overpaid actors in one of those Oscar-hopeful tear jerkers that Aerial is always wanting to go see at the movies.”

Aerial and David remained in contact with each other throughout the rest of the summer of 1998. The two became best friends.

“I could always talk to him for hours about anything,” she said. “He was just a good listener and was just a good man with a good heart. I always told him that whoever he ended up marrying would be a lucky girl.”

Aerial, now 25, and David, now 29, were married on April 19, 2008, in the village of Amoudi on the island of Santorini in Greece. Due to employment matters, the couple maintains a residence in Valdosta and Canton. She works as a regional recruiter for Georgia College & State University in Milledgeville. He works for the United States Postal Service as a supervisor.