Caroline Noel Franklin said that Kevin Knipple Wilkes had the softest lips when they first kissed in 1973.
It proved true again 49 years later.
“Every time I kiss this man it’s effervescent bubbles,” said Ms. Franklin, now 66.
In 1971, she was among 20 girls joining 60 boys in the first coed freshman high school class in 129 years at Trinity School in Manhattan. (The independent prep school, for kindergarten to grade 12, actually started out coed in 1709.)
“It changed the school’s sweaty, smelly nature,” said Mr. Wilkes, also 66, who entered Trinity in first grade.
Ms. Franklin went from “great crush to great crush” their freshman year, dating four different boys. Mr. Wilkes, a bit shy, waited on the sidelines.
“She was the ‘It’ girl,” he said. “I was just the awkward guy.”
By February 1973, sophomore year, he drummed up enough courage to call her on a rotary phone to ask her on what he considered the ultimate date — a Harlem Globetrotters game at Madison Square Garden on Presidents’ Day.
