From friends to lovers, the story of how Jason and DiAnna Sox fell in love is straight out of a movie. With Jason Sox in the science department and DiAnna Sox in English, these two teachers met by chance and have been together ever since.

“At first we were kind of just acquaintances. We’d run back and forth and say hey in the halls, perhaps, but we didn’t really get to know each other until she became the student council advisor and needed some chaperones for a trip,” Jason said.

During DiAnna Sox’s third year of teaching, the student council was going to a state conference. They needed another male chaperone for the trip, and it happened to fall on Jason Sox. 

“…I sent him an email saying something like, ‘Hey, we’re going on this trip in March for Student Council and we need you as a chaperone if you are available,’ and of course, he never responded,” DiAnna said. “So after not hearing from him for a few days, I marched myself down to his room and I was waiting there with my hands on my hips you know? I’ve come to find, years later, that he deleted it. How dare he delete my email? Well anyway, he comes out of the workroom, wearing his safety goggles and his lab coat like the dork he is, and then I convinced him to come.” 

While Jason Sox says that he does not recall deleting said email, he is really glad that he ended up going to the conference anyway, because it opened the door to something truly beautiful.

“…it worked out well eventually because when we were together on that trip, I guess I got to know her better,” Jason said. “I thought that she was witty and I enjoyed, like, being around her. She was smart, intelligent, pretty, and all the things that you would look for in someone that you wanted to date. So I guess we just kind of clicked in a way that you don’t do with everybody… and I could tell that she was special.” 

For most relationships, meeting each other’s parents is a very predominant part of the beginning stages, but for some reason, it rarely goes smoothly.

“The first time that she met my parents…we were in the living room playing Wii Bowling. I thought I had done something to her controller settings to make it easier…but whatever I did made it much harder…My family was trying to be encouraging because it looked like she wasn’t good at video games or whatever, but in reality, it was my fault. So basically I accidentally embarrassed her in front of my parents,” Jason said.

From there on, Mr. and Mrs. Sox dated covertly for a long while. They became adept at appearing as simply ‘just co-workers’ in professional environments and around students, but it caught up to them eventually. 

“Gossip around Wando travels really fast, and especially working with some of the same kids, like with student council…we tried to keep it really quiet and really hush-hush. We would do our best not to act like anything was going on, and apparently, we did that really well. I remember having a [student] who heard we were getting engaged the same week that she heard we were dating, even though we had been for two years. Jason and I thought that was pretty funny,” DiAnna said.

Since then, Mr. and Mrs. Sox have continued to teach at Wando for over ten years. They have built a life for themselves and a family to share their love with. DiAnna noted that working in the same industry as her partner brings a deeper understanding of what he is going through, and it helps keep them close. 

“I think that working at the same school is a benefit that not all married couples get to have…There’s enough space between us though, like being different departments and different areas of the school; so it’s not like [we’re] right on top of each other or spending every moment together,” DiAnna said. “… but when [life gets stressful], I can totally empathize with what he feels. I think, yeah, there’s a level of comfort knowing he’s nearby.”