Classmates Reunite: Touching Online Answer to 'Who Married High School Sweetheart?'

This tale of romance with Birmingham roots, posted online at the end of Valentine's Day week, is shared with the writer's permission.

Donna Jacobites and Gordon Hoyem, who knew each other from the Birmingham-Covington School and Seaholm High's Class of 1975, married in 2003. At a 736-member Birmingham memories group on Facebook, she was the first to respond early Sunday to the question "Who married their high school sweetheart?"

Here's what she wrote:

I married my junior high school sweetheart 8 years ago. After high school I moved to Manhattan and hadn't seen him in 30 years.

As a single mom, I moved back to Birmingham to be around family. I took my daughter to the Shain Park Fair and ran into a guy who used to hang out with us. He updated me on what Gordy was up to. He was divorced and living in Gaylord.

About a month later, I decided to call him. We talked on the phone every night for about six months. He came down to Birmingham that Valentine's Day weekend. We bought sushi and went to the Quarton Lake waterfalls where everyone used to party back in the day. We carved our names in the cement wall of the waterfalls.

We got married that July. A lot of friends from Covington and Seaholm came to our wedding. We had 70's music playing in the background. It was great!

— Donna Jacobites Hoyem

Postscript: The childhood sweethearts live in Gaylord as a blended family with her teen-age daughter and his teen-age son. Gordon Hoyem, who graduated from Northern Michigan University in 1978 with a business degree, is a real estate agent at Coldwell Banker Schmidt Realtors.