Kathy Pleau and Matt Martin had known each other for years. But one night, it turned into something more.
LEWISTON – She was his best friend’s little sister, the kid who liked to play video games when he was visiting, who had a habit of leaning right or left when she steered the car on the television screen.
He was her brother’s friend who, as sweet as he was, seemed like nothing more at the time. And he was in a different grade at St. Dominic Regional High School; he was a sophomore, and she was in junior high.
But on a canoe trip on the Saco River years later, after everyone else had retreated to their tents for the night, they found themselves talking by the campfire.
The conversation lasted for hours, and suddenly, Kathy Pleau and Matt Martin began looking at one another differently.
That was 2003. Two years later in August they would marry.
“I mean, it’s just romantic, the moon and the fire, and you’re talking to somebody that you know but you’re getting to know on a different level,” Kathy Martin said, recalling that fateful canoe trip.
She’d known Matt Martin for so long, and been to so many family outings with him that she rarely thought twice about dating him. And they were usually dating other people – at least until that summer.
“I was excited that she was going to be there,” Matt Martin said, telling his own version of the story.
The canoe trips started as a way for Martin and his college friends to get together in the summertime, but quickly grew to include family and friends. Now, Martin said, they are more like luxury camping trips with grills, tables and even portable toilets.
“Basically the whole canoe trip was at our wedding,” he added. So was his sister, who served as his wife’s matron of honor. And his wife’s brother, who, being his best friend, served as his best man.
The funny thing about their relationship, Kathy Martin said, “is we can’t remember what our first date was.”
Likely dinner somewhere, they agreed. But they’d spent so much time together with their families beforehand, it’s all blurred together.
Except for that night on the Saco River.
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