Pioneer Love Stories: Corey '10 and Kylee '10 Maarschalk

The first day of class our freshman year, I was the early kid to an 8 a.m. New Testament class with Suzanne Nicholson because I was worried I'd miss something. I was still nervous about my college choice, so I’d been praying for some kind of confirmation throughout the day and, because it was an early class, if God could send someone cute for me to look at that, it would be an added bonus. The first guy to walk in the room was Corey and I literally looked up and mentally said, "Thank you!" to God. I then spent the rest of the semester turning around to "check the clock" but really just to check out Corey!

I got his number to invite him to study with some friends and kept it close to work up the nerve to actually use it. I would see him around campus and always try to say hi; I took the story for the Aviso to cover Campus Crusade going on Big Break because I knew he had gone and I could use it as an excuse to interview him; literally all my friends knew I had a crush on him, but he wouldn't give me the time of day. Another friend had started sharing Bible verses with someone through campus mail and I had been writing Bible verses as a part of my daily devotional, so I started to do the same, but anonymously, I folded them up and wrote Corey Maarschalk, Box #833 and popped it in campus mail. I sent him a Bible verse almost every week through the whole second semester.

Our friend groups started to merge more over the course of the year so we were around one another a little more. In a group conversation a couple weeks before finals, we were talking about where we liked to study on campus. I preferred the library isolation room, but I heard Corey say he studied in the Barn, so the next day, I started studying in the Barn. The thing is, I didn't know where in the Barn he studied, so eventually I went up to the Rose Room and just settled in and LOVED it! One night as I settled in, Corey showed up! He backed out, apologizing, thinking I was in there to pray (yes, I know that's its intended purpose), but I told him he was fine and that I was just studying so he was welcome to come in. On opposite sides of the room, we set up our study materials and just sat quietly, hardly saying a word to one another while internally I was freaking out! We both ended up studying in there for the next few days leading up to the night before the last day of finals. I remember saying to one of my best friends, exasperated, "I don't care if he ever likes me! He just seems like such a good person and I'd love to be his friend. I'm not going to go up to the Rose Room tonight because I feel like I've been too pushy and I just need to put things in his corner if he wants to be my friend, too." So I joined her and several others at our last Late Night snack in the cafeteria.

While were were there, Corey actually called me! It was the first time my phone rang with his number and he asked if I planned to study in the Rose Room that night and I said, "Of course I am! What else would I do?! I'm on my way now." I rushed out and ran to get my backpack from my room and, as I got to the Rose Room, he was about to leave because apparently I took a little longer checking the mirror than I realized. We settled back into what had become our routine, but this night had a little more conversation. We talked about getting a group together during the summer and going to Cedar Point, we talked about our parents and going home the next day after finals were over, and I finally worked up the courage to ask him if he had checked his mailbox that day, as I had sent one last Bible verse that morning.

He smiled and said, "Kylee, I've been checking my mailbox all year and I knew it was you." I blushed every shade of red as he told me he put things together because of our studying together and he recognized my handwriting. We shifted into him quizzing me for my Old Testament exam using my flashcards and at one point he looked at me with a big smile and, self-consciously, I worried I had something in my teeth but later he told me that it was at that moment he felt like God spoke to him saying, "Get ready, this is the woman I've prepared for you!"

It turns out, Corey had made a promise to himself and to God that he would seek God first and intentionally not date or anything through all of his freshman year. We went on our first date the week after finals on May 7, 2007. Our third date was to Cedar Point where Corey asked me to be his girlfriend. A few months later was my birthday and Corey gifted me a sweet scrapbook that included the Bible verses I had sent to him through campus mail. We knew we wanted to move to North Carolina right after graduation, so rather than having all the big life events happen at once, we got married on May 7, 2009, between our junior and senior years.