Surviving spouses always remember how they met their mate. Here are the meet-cute stories told to The Inquirer’s obit writer.

It happened high in the mountains, at a children’s hospital in Cleveland, in night class at St. Joseph’s University, during dances and dinner parties, and lots of times on blind dates. Sometimes, it was love at first sight. Other times, they needed a do-over.

It’s when couples first met, where lives touched, and stories began. I write obituaries for The Inquirer, and surviving spouses always remember the moment they met their mate. It’s a starting point, a milestone marked by memories of anticipation and hope, the first glimmer of a new adventure.

When people share those memories, in soft nostalgic voices, through laughter and tears, they take me with them, back to where it all began.

“It was a storybook start to a storybook marriage,” Susan Wachter said of meeting Michael Wachter in 1965 outside the economics library at Harvard. She had an armful of books when she heard a man say: “May I help you with those?”

Then she saw his eyes and smile. “I said to myself, ‘This will work,’” she said. “I knew it then. Right away.” They were married 54 years.

David Berengut showed up at a Super Bowl party at the synagogue, and Anne Singer was there. “She picked me out, and basically I was hooked,” he said.

He jokes he agreed to date her “under false pretenses.” She was neither religious nor a football fan. They were married 14 years.

“My heart started pounding so hard I thought she could notice,” Jeff Fuller said of seeing Martha Madigan for the first time at the Art Institute of Chicago. It was the late 1970s, and he was an art dealer observing his friend’s photography class.

Madigan, beautiful and elegant, walked in. Fuller, fascinated, freaked out. He had to meet her. Their first date was fine, but the fireworks exploded on the second. “It was perfect,” he said. Forty-three years married.

Sharon Wright, Philadelphia police officer, met Joe Leon Wright, security guard, while responding to a report of a shoplifter in 1990. Her daughters do not know if an arrest was made. They were married 17 years.

John Bonavita met Harold Goldman at a dinner party in 1982, was mesmerized by their conversation, amazed by their similarities, and amused by their differences. Partners 39 years and married 11.

Lesline Brown wasn’t surprised she was the last student to arrive for her first night class at St. Joseph’s University. She worked a day job, and traffic was snarled. So she was happy one seat was still open. She didn’t pay much attention to the guy sitting beside her.

But it seemed odd the same seat was the only one open again when she slipped into class a few nights later. Then it happened again. And again. And again. “It became my seat,” she said. And the guy sat beside her all semester.

By the end of the term, Brown and Larry Brothers Jr. were friends. Wasn’t it funny, she told him as they packed up their books for the final time, how fate had thrown them together. He smiled. It wasn’t fate.

After that first class, Brothers had shooed away anyone who attempted to take that seat before Brown arrived. Eventually no one even tried. “They all assumed it was reserved for me,” Brown said.

A week before their last class, Brown suggested Brothers invite their classmates out for a semester-ending celebration, and he agreed. But he was the only one there when she arrived at the restaurant. “He invited no one,” she said. “Except me.” Thirty years married.

Elizabeth Weiser Winstead lived in York, Pa., the home of the York White Roses, a minor-league baseball team, and her father instructed her to, under no circumstances, date players on that team. However … you know where this goes.

Winstead first encountered Don Flynn at a York nightclub in 1965. He marched up to her and told her he was a baseball player. So, per instructions, she tried to resist him.

She couldn’t. They danced a bit, went back to his place with another couple, and wound up chatting awkwardly in the kitchen while their friends kissed on the couch.

They went to a movie a few days later, and Flynn impressed her father with his plan to become a teacher and coach. They were married 55 years.

Stefan Skalina was new at Cleveland’s Rainbow Babies and Children’s Hospital in 1979 when he was scheduled to make evening rounds with fellow doctor Mary Ellen Leder.

They were strangers but got along nicely as they walked the halls and checked in on babies. Turns out they were both single and in need of a visit to the grocery store.

Leder also wanted to know about those pink spots on Skalina’s scrubs. “Of course that was the first thing she noticed,” he said. It wasn’t blood. The hospital’s new liquid soap flowed easily, and he had learned earlier that night to go easy on the dispenser.

He promised to wear clean clothes Saturday night and invited Leder to meet him at the grocery. But she didn’t show. So he shopped alone and marked time until Monday to find out what happened.

Leder had been summoned to check on a sick baby. They laughed it off and went on their date.

“I was an intern when we met, and she was a fellow who supervised the interns,” Skalina said. “It was a little scandalous, us getting together. I was hitting above my weight.” Thirty-one years married.

George Scott just wanted to win the game when he showed up at the church in South Philadelphia. He was playing basketball with the Sphas, a local pro team sponsored by the South Philadelphia Hebrew Association, and Ethel Jones was there as the girlfriend of one of the locals on the church team.

When Scott spotted her in the crowd, he lost all interest in the game. Later, after investigation, he learned Jones worked as a babysitter for a neighbor. So he dropped by one night — out of the blue, of course — and they got to talking.

Hearing the boyfriend was no longer around, he persuaded her to teach him to dance. They wound up going to a party at which, they ran into the old boyfriend. They were married 49 years.

Marilyn Levine was looking for love when she left home in Brooklyn to visit the Tamiment Resort in the Pocono Mountains in the late 1950s. She was a few years out of high school, and her mother told her to return with a phone number or two because, well, she wasn’t married yet.

Paul Weintraub just happened to be at the same resort, and the two hit it off when they met and started to chat. They spent the afternoon talking and walking amid the scenery and bustle of the place, and Levine was excited to share the news with her mother. But there was a hitch.

Weintraub lived in Philadelphia, so Levine’s mother labeled him “G.U.” — geographically undesirable. How could he sustain 100-mile round-trips to take her dining and dancing?

Weintraub thumbed through his address book and rang up an old buddy. Stan Selbst lived in New York, sympathized with his love-struck pal, and offered his spare room when Weintraub went north to see Levine. Married 62 years.

Sharon Bajorek and Marianne Avery were best friends as teenagers in Chicago. Bajorek stopped often at Avery’s house after school, and they listened to music, talked about stuff, and hung out until dinnertime.

Sometimes, Bill Avery, Marianne’s older brother, gave Bajorek a ride home in his car. “But I didn’t pay much attention to him,” she said.

Then, one day … “It just happened,” Bajorek said. Bill was driving her home and asked for a date. Just like that.

So they caught a movie at the drive-in. “I guess it was just meant to be,” Bajorek said. Married 62 years.