Ami and Stephen Kardos: High school sweethearts reunited after three decades

Ami didn’t see anyone she knew at the coveted lockers near Northeast High School’s art room, but she did see a good-looking stranger with a motorcycle helmet.

“My name is Ami,” she told him that afternoon in 1980. “Can I use your locker? You can keep your helmet in the art room.”

Stephen wasn’t that great at talking to girls he actually knew, plus his brain was foggy from working overnight. But Ami was waiting for an answer, so he gave the easiest one: “OK.”

By October, she rode to school on the back of his motorcycle and they kissed goodbye before she sped from their now-shared locker to art class. Ami taught Stephen how to sneak Chinese takeout into the movies. On the rare weekend that he didn’t work, he drove them to Atlantic City.

Ami worked a typical part-time teen job in retail. Stephen worked adult hours driving a cab. He knew 17-year-olds were not supposed to work like that, but no one at the cab company or at home stopped him; his father died when Stephen was 10 and his income helped support his family.

Stephen gave his mom whatever she needed. The rest paid for his motorcycle, a car, dates with Ami, and for some things Stephen didn’t talk about: gambling and the stimulants and alcohol he used to cheat sleep and bury feelings he didn’t understand.

Ami soon saw little of her boyfriend. When they were together, he would not answer her questions about what was wrong, or talk at all about his late father.

“I couldn’t fully explain or communicate my frustration,” he said. And he saw nothing good from telling this nice girl about the not-so-nice parts of his life.

Ami loved Stephen, which made it especially hard to break up with him.

After high school, Ami earned her undergrad at Tyler School of Art. She married at 20 and displayed her ceramics in local galleries. She divorced at 30, earned master’s degrees in art and education, and became an elementary art teacher in the Wissahickon School District — a job she still holds and loves.

Ami married her second husband at 30, and they had two children: Bryan, who is now 20, and Danielle, 18. After about 14 years of marriage, they separated.

After high school, Stephen kept working at the same frenetic pace, this time attending college instead of high school. His coping habits continued, too. Feeling himself spiraling into a dark hole, he made a drastic move for his own survival: He enlisted. Stephen spent four and a half years in the Army, stationed in Korea, Germany, and elsewhere. It forced him to abandon self-destructive behavior and taught him focus and discipline.

After his discharge, Stephen re-enrolled in college and earned a political science degree at Temple. He met and married his first wife and they had a son, Jonathan, who is now 27, and moved to Cherry Hill. Stephen sold clothes and cars, working in sales and management, and often creatively tended bar on the side. He eventually landed at GM Financial, where he is now a corporate trainer. After 19 years of marriage, he and his wife separated.

In 2011, Stephen heard that his former coworker, John, had passed away unexpectedly. Shocked and sad, he wanted to send his condolences to John’s family. He didn’t know how to reach them, but he knew someone who would: John was Ami’s brother-in-law. Stephen found her work email online.

Ami was surprised to see Stephen’s name in her inbox. She appreciated his kind words, and, as promised, shared them with her sister, Randi.

Less than a year later, Stephen heard that Randi had passed away. Again, he emailed Ami. More emails followed, and then a phone call, and then the two old friends decided to meet in Conshohocken, halfway between her home in Ambler and his in Gloucester for a drink.

It was nice to see him again and to know he was doing well, but after a time, Ami thought the evening had almost run its course. She excused herself — allegedly to use the restroom, but really to call a friend and ask for a bailout call in 20 minutes.

She walked back to the table and, to her great surprise, bent down and kissed Stephen’s ear.

“I don’t know why, but I like to think it was an intervention by my late father or my sister,” she said. “It was like someone said, ‘You’re not leaving so fast.’ ”

Stephen said he felt a familiar stunned surprise, “sort of like when I was standing at my locker back in high school. I didn’t really know what to do, so I wrapped my arms around her and I gave her a kiss.”

Stephen, who is now 57, and Ami, now 56, were soon together as much as possible, yet it was never enough time. “It felt like we had just gotten together, and then we would look at the time, and eight hours had passed,” said Ami. “I had never experienced anything like that,” added Stephen.

He unpacked all the things he had kept hidden from her in high school. She explained why those unknowns and the mysterious absences led to the break up. These answers gave both closure on their first relationship and a clean slate to start the second.

Stephen knew he was truly opening up the day he began feeding Ami bites of his omelet — he had never shared his food with anyone before.

Stephen loves the way his energy and Ami’s feed and build off of each other, often to a crescendo of goofiness and laughs. “People either groove to the weird energy or they want to move to another zip code,” he said. “I love the fact that she allows me to be me. I love that she’ll push me on things. For a very long time, no one wanted to push me.”

He appreciates that she cheerfully pardons his total absorption in Flyers games.

“I love that we have this synergy, that we intrinsically get each other,” Ami said. “I know that he loves and cherishes me as-is, that I don’t have to put on airs or mince words. I love that I laugh every single day, that he is willing to put himself out if it makes me happy, and that his heart is huge and mushy.”

She’s grateful that he’s willing to see Dead cover bands so she can dance.

The two walked into their 30-year high school reunion together and many classmates assumed they had been together for all three decades.

The couple married on October 15, 2015, before 36 guests at the Joseph Ambler Inn. Ami’s children walked her down the aisle. Stephen’s son was his best man. The bride made the cake topper, which features Stephen in a pirate hat and a Flyers jersey holding a tie-dyed and beaded hippie Ami on a beach.

They live in Ambler with cats Puddin’ and Spanky. The couple has used their COVID-19 time at home to virtually travel via real estate websites to the beach represented in that cake topper: St. Augustine.

If all goes well, that spot will one day be their semiretirement home base. She will teach art to children, and he will serve rum to passengers on a pirate-themed booze cruise, and they will walk the sand together.