Baton Rouge is home to loads of iconic love stories.
Think: Livvy Dunne and Paul Skenes; The Queen of Sparkles and her king; Flau’jae Johnson and Chris Hilton Jr. (have you seen their Love & Basketball-themed photo shoot?). And we’ll count Lana Del Rey and her Des Allemands, Louisiana, husband Jeremy Dufrene as Capital Region-adjacent, too.
Still, everyday love stories are just as sweet. Here are five local couples who shared their origin stories with 225. Do you and your boo have an epic story of your own? Let us know about it by emailing [email protected].
|
|
|
Gus and Whitney Stark
Whitney and Gus Stark met in college at Louisiana State University when they both worked as photographers at the student newspaper. They started out as friends, but Gus developed feelings for Whitney. Eventually, they started dating, and after their first kiss, Whitney remembers their friends all saying, “It finally happened!”
Whitney was beginning to get into wedding photography at the time and said she couldn’t get the thought of a future with Gus out of her mind. “I do remember being a month in and thinking, ‘We’re going to get married,’” she says.
Three years later, her prophecy came true, and Gus proposed on the Brooklyn Bridge in New York City at sunrise. The two photographers were married in August 2022, squeezing their wedding date between weddings and football games.
Today, Gus and Whitney are still photographers. Gus is the director of football photography for LSU Athletics, and Whitney captures weddings through her business Les Petits Bijoux Photography. While their schedules vary due to the nature of their jobs, they cling to their routines. They focus on date nights, walking their two dogs together, planning dinners and taking trips. One of their recent notable adventures was traveling to New York City to see Jayden Daniels receive the 2023 Heisman Trophy.
“I think our love language is definitely quality time,” Whitney says.
The couple plans to spend Valentine’s Day at home with their close friends and neighbors.
Olivia and Brad Stoufflet
Olivia and Brad Stoufflet met after finishing the River Roux Olympic Triathlon in New Roads. Brad was sitting beside Olivia and her family at a bar. They chatted a bit, but Olivia was in a relationship at the time, and nothing happened from the interaction. Later that night, Olivia’s boyfriend ended their relationship.
“So I met my future husband and got dumped on the same day,” she says. Cut to eight months later: A mutual friend started talking to Brad about a girl in Baton Rouge he should go on a blind date with. Brad immediately knew it was Olivia.
“Coincidentally, we were signed up for this full Ironman in Arizona before we even had met,” Olivia says. “So when we started dating, our whole dating life was pretty much training for that race and getting to do it together.”
A year and some change after they started dating, Brad planned a trip to Alabama for the two of them and a couple of Olivia’s friends. The morning after they arrived at the Airbnb, he woke up early and planted a surprise scavenger hunt for her around the property. It was a chilly morning, they recall, with fog rolling off the streams in the 50-acre property. The last note led Olivia to “where the rivers met.” And behind a tree next to two connected streams, Brad proposed.
Today, Brad is a digital consultant and Olivia is a personal trainer with her own business, which allows her to work from home and spend time with their two children. Keeping the love alive does take work, Olivia says: “Life goes really fast.” They make a point to have at least one date night out a month. They bring games home to play together and the also participate in Bible studies together.
“I think we’re both very driven and motivated in sports and in life,” Olivia says. “So even in our relationship, we love to invest and constantly try to figure out how we can make it better.”
For Valentine’s Day, the couple has a tradition to keep. When Olivia was pregnant with their firstborn, she wanted to celebrate Valentine’s Day at Waffle House. However, her plans were thwarted when she delivered early. Since then, they’ve gone to Waffle House every year for Valentine’s Day. The kids come, too—it’s the day of love, after all.
Nancy and Tom Hazlett
Nancy and Tom Hazlett met in class at Oregon State University when Nancy noticed Tom’s fraternity pin and asked if he knew someone she’d gone out with a few times prior. They got to talking, and within a few months, they knew they were going to get married. That fraternity brother she had been out with? He wound up as a groomsman in their wedding.
“Marry your best friend,” Nancy says.
“You always will have that friendship as a foundation,” Tom adds.
These days, the pair lives on 3 acres of land that they say keeps them busy. Tom served in the military, and they’ve lived in several states, including Hawaii, Michigan and West Virginia. They’ve lived in the Baton Rouge area for more than 30 years. They’ve also done a fair bit of traveling: They’ve visited 48 states—all except Alaska and North Dakota.
“We’re slowing down a little bit now. I don’t know if that’s us or the RV,” Nancy jokes.
The couple has two kids, five grandkids and two therapy poodles who they frequently take to visit kids at the hospital—and to LSU tailgates. While the couple doesn’t normally celebrate in a particularly special way for Valentine’s Day—“It’s so commercialized and busy at restaurants,” Nancy says—they typically go out for dinner before or after the big day. They also joke that if they want something, they go ahead and get it, claiming it as their Valentine’s Day gift. Valentine’s can come on any day, they say.
Taylor and Kyle Wilkinson
Taylor and Kyle Wilkinson first met at Happy’s Running Club. And later, at a big group dinner at Rock-n-Sake Bar & Sushi, someone pointed out to the whole group that the two had chemistry. The pair saw each other a little more frequently after that, and it was at Magpie Café on Perkins Road that two of Taylor’s friends told her she needed to date Kyle. A few months in, she knew she loved him.
“I was just ready to change the course of my life to be with him,” she says.
Taylor was a senior at LSU, set to graduate that year, and she had no plans to be in Baton Rouge post-graduation. But things changed when she fell in love with Kyle. Fast forward to today, and the pair have been married for nine years and have two kids. They also now own Magpie Café, the coffee shop that was so formative to their love story.
“We went there when we were dating, we went there when we were engaged, we went there when we were married, before kids. We brought our first kid there even before he was a month old,” Taylor says. “It was such a Baton Rouge staple we frequented almost every Saturday morning for five or six years.”
“It’s kind of a love story in itself,” Kyle says about their relationship with Magpie.
Taylor jokes that it was the best gift Kyle could have ever gotten her. This Valentine’s Day, the couple plans to go to one of their favorite spots, BLDG 5, for lunch.
Alicia and Chad Newman
Alicia and Chad Newman met over the phone, sight unseen, and decided to take a chance that would last a lifetime. Two recently married friends who had been set up by their mothers decided to take up the matchmaking mantle themselves and introduced them to one another. After talking on the phone for two weeks, Alicia mentioned that she would be in New Orleans for a wedding, and they decided to meet for lunch at Middendorf’s Restaurant a little less than an hour away.
“Well, lunch turned into the weekend, and the weekend turned into the rest of our lives,” Alicia says.
Chad became her date to the wedding that weekend and while they didn’t say it at first, they’ve since acknowledged that it was serious as soon as they met.
|
|
|
“We knew the minute we laid eyes on each other. We knew,” she says.
Alicia lived in Jackson, Mississippi, and Chad was located in Pineville, Louisiana. The distance posed an obvious problem. But they pushed through and dated long-distance for four months. Eventually, Alicia’s job fizzled out, and she found herself looking for a new one. She had to think: Would she look for a new job in Jackson, or would she look to move closer to Chad? Chad expressed an interest in living in Baton Rouge together, so they both moved to the Capital City and finished a yearlong courtship there. Later that year, he proposed. They married two years after their first phone call, and last year, they celebrated their 20th anniversary.
Alicia calls their love “serendipitous.” Today, they like to go on weekend trips a few times a year. They also intentionally keep their faith as the center of their relationship. They enjoy church activities with one another and with their children. The couple doesn’t have any special Valentine’s Day plans this year, but they do have a weekend trip coming up in March that they’re looking forward to.