With class
Now-married couple managed to keep romance alive through middle school, high school and college.
EDMOND — When the time came to decide on life after high school, Matthew Hart and Jordan Williams knew one thing for sure.
Wherever they went to college, they would go together.
No long distance romance for this studious, all-in pair.
They had attended the same elementary school, middle school and high school, and their relationship blossomed over the years.
On May 26, two weeks after graduating with honors from Oklahoma State University together, the couple exchanged wedding vows. Williams noted that the wedding venue, The Manor at Coffee Creek in Edmond, was fitting because it wasn’t far from the schools where their love story started years ago.
“It’s like two miles way from where we grew up and went to school every day,” she said. “That’s where our relationship began.”
School days
Hart and Williams, both 22, knew each other in elementary school but actually became friends in a pre-algebra class in seventh grade at Deer Creek Middle School. Their lockers were in the same area, and Williams remembers that Hart often helped her open hers.
“I sat next to Jordan by pure chance. I didn’t know anything about her, but we slowly became friends over paper airplanes and me pretending to be a football star. I spent the next year trying to show off any way I could,” Hart said in his version of the couple’s love story on their “Stealing His Hart” wedding page.
By the time the two were freshmen at Deer Creek High School, they knew their bond went beyond friendship.
“He asked me to our freshman Fall Formal. We were like 14 years old,” Hart said recalling those school days.
The couple got the OK from their parents to attend the freshman dance, but Williams wasn’t officially allowed to date until she turned 16. Soon after she reached that milestone birthday, Hart asked her out, and they have been together ever since.
Mike Donnelly, a Deer Creek High School teacher who was Williams’ basketball coach, said he wasn’t surprised to learn that his former students had tied the knot.
“I had both Matt and Jordan in my AP European History class when they were sophomores. I got a chance to watch them interact, and you could tell there was something special between them. They had a good way of joking with one another, and you could tell they really cared about each other,” Donnelly said. “They are both good people good students — high character.”
When the pair both chose to attend OSU, no one was really surprised.
Williams said she lived in what she described as a “house divided,” with family members who are fans of both OSU and the University of Oklahoma. However, her mother, Lisa Fortenberry, is an OSU graduate who proudly watched as her daughter became a fourth-generation OSU graduate.
Hart said they mainly talked about going to one of those colleges, but he