Matthew Ryan Burroughs doesn’t know if it was the red dress that he first noticed — red is his favorite color — but he clearly remembers seeing Diana Lindsay McDermott walking into the birthday party of a mutual friend in September 2015.
Both were undergraduates at Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University at the time. Mr. Burroughs was a year ahead of Ms. McDermott, and already knew who she was through mutual friends. He had even looked at her Facebook page to learn more.
“She looked stunning,” he said of her entrance that evening.
Ms. McDermott almost hadn’t come to the party; she had just learned earlier that evening that her beloved grandfather had died. It was her mother who convinced her to go.
At 6-foot-7, Mr. Burroughs is hard to miss. But somehow Ms. McDermott had never noticed him before. She felt compelled to state the obvious.
“Wow, you’re tall,” she said, after approaching him.
To which he responded, “Yes, I am.”
A few days later, Ms. McDermott asked Mr. Burroughs if he would be interested in meeting her friend, a fellow student, who is 6 feet tall.
He was too polite to refuse. And on that date, about a week later, he quickly realized that he had a strong preference for Ms. McDermott.
