{"id":140441,"date":"2019-02-06T13:32:54","date_gmt":"2019-02-06T19:32:54","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.metrostlouis.org\/?p=140441"},"modified":"2024-02-29T09:57:16","modified_gmt":"2024-02-29T15:57:16","slug":"valentine-passenger-profile-demarise-mark","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.metrostlouis.org\/nextstop\/valentine-passenger-profile-demarise-mark\/","title":{"rendered":"Valentine Passenger Profile: DeMarise & Mark"},"content":{"rendered":"

In celebration of Valentine\u2019s Day, we will be sharing a special story of a couple who met while riding Metro. This week\u2019s Passenger Profile features two transit lovebirds, DeMarise and Mark.\u00a0<\/em><\/p>\n

\"Happy<\/a><\/p>\n

When it comes to finding your true love, it doesn\u2019t hurt to have the help of Cupid\u2019s arrow. In the love story of DeMarise and Mark, the role of matchmaker was played by Georgia, one of our MetroBus operators.<\/p>\n

About a year ago, DeMarise was starting a new job and needed to get to her four-week training program. She relied on the #35 Rock Road to get there. At that time, love was all but in the rearview mirror for DeMarise.<\/p>\n

\u201cI had just gotten out of a long relationship,\u201d she said. \u201cI wasn\u2019t interested in meeting anyone. It\u2019s those times when you\u2019re not looking, when it falls in your lap.\u201d<\/p>\n

As fate would have it, the #35 Rock Road was also the route that Mark was riding to get to his job at Boeing. And, it didn\u2019t take long for DeMarise to notice this gentlemen sitting on the bus. Mark noticed her too, but neither of them could find the necessary courage to get the ball rolling. They needed a nudge. They needed Georgia.<\/p>\n

\u201cI got on the bus one day when Mark wasn\u2019t on, and the bus driver turned around and said, \u2018That guy you\u2019ve been staring at thinks you\u2019re cute,\u2019\u201d DeMarise said. \u201cI told the driver that I thought he was cute too, but that my training would be over soon and I wouldn\u2019t be riding this bus for much longer. She must have told him that day, because the next day he sat next to me, and we started to chat.\u201d<\/p>\n

Their first conversation had to end when DeMarise got off the bus, but Mark had a secret plan in the works. All DeMarise had to do was look in her bag.<\/p>\n

\u201cWhen I got to work I noticed something,\u201d she said. \u201cMark had slipped a card in my work bag. I pulled out the card and it said – Hi, I\u2019m Mark, I think you\u2019re beautiful, please have lunch on me and there was his phone number and a $20 bill to be used for lunch.\u201d<\/p>\n

After that, the two would spend their commute together on the #35 Rock Road. They even continued meeting when DeMarise\u2019s training program was over.<\/p>\n

Later that year, on a weekend getaway together, Mark proposed to DeMarise.<\/p>\n

\u201cThere was no grand gesture,\u201d she said. \u201cWe just knew that we were on same page, and this was where it was heading.\u201d<\/p>\n

The stars had to align just right for both DeMarise and Mark to meet, on that one day, on that one particular bus and especially with that special bus operator. Everything had to line up for the spark to ignite.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe may have never bumped into each other without riding that bus,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n

DeMarise and Mark got married on June 22, 2018.<\/p>\n

\"Happy<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

In celebration of Valentine\u2019s Day, we will be sharing a special story of a couple who met while riding Metro. This week\u2019s Passenger Profile features two transit lovebirds, DeMarise and Mark.\u00a0 When it comes to finding your true love, it doesn\u2019t hurt to have the help of Cupid\u2019s arrow. In the love story of DeMarise […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":21,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[9],"tags":[1198,1687],"class_list":["post-140441","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-metro-lifestyle","tag-passenger-profile","tag-valentine"],"acf":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"featured_media_urls":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.metrostlouis.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/140441","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.metrostlouis.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.metrostlouis.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.metrostlouis.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/21"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.metrostlouis.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=140441"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.metrostlouis.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/140441\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.metrostlouis.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=140441"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.metrostlouis.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=140441"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.metrostlouis.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=140441"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}