Keegan & Robert Hatton’s Story

”We have known each other for as long as we can remember as we grew up across the street from each other. So we don’t really remember first impressions of each other because we were like 4 when we first met. However, we didn’t go to the same school as one another until high school so we were never super close friends. Our freshman year in high school we dated for a couple of months but we broke up due to me punching him in the stomach at a church event and then not speaking to him. I’m not sure why I did that… 

We went our separate ways until junior year when we both happened to be outside at the same time, each with a friend. My friend and I were walking the sidewalks – clearly trying to get their attention – while they followed us around. That sparked our interest in each other again. 

We were supposed to meet up after our winter cotillion dance to hang out as we both went with separate people – but I didn’t get that memo and messed that up royally. My track record with him wasn’t looking too good, however, I convinced him to come over the next night and talk it out and explain the miscommunication. We decided to try this again and I guess as they say, the rest is history.

I knew after 2 months I loved him and was going to marry him – he knew sooner, but I was too scared to tell him that I loved him back for a while so he just told me he “love-liked” me until I was ready. We both went to different colleges but we always made an effort to see each other during the week and would come home on the weekends. There was never any question we would be together and so the effort was easy.

We served at a church together for a while in Lexington – he was the youth minister and I helped. We graduated college and that summer he had schemed for us to go back to our home church – the same church I punched him in all those years ago, the same church we were both baptized in, the same church we would later get married in and dedicate both of our babies in – and he proposed to me on stage at the end of the service. We were supposed to be talking about how God was working through our ministry at our church in Lexington but Robert had other plans so I was definitely taken off guard.

We got married the next summer and then had our son 5 years later and our daughter 2 years after that. We are going on 16 years of being together and 9 years of marriage and he is the easiest yes I have ever said. We always put God first in our household and in our marriage and we always have a safe space to honestly communicate with one another. Life is hardly ever easy, but doing it together is easy because he’s it for me – and always has been.”