Westside grads become high school sweethearts

With Valentine’s Day looming, Westside Media Group will be bringing you several perspectives of high school dating with a relationships in-depth. From teachers who have married their high school sweethearts to deciding whether to hang out with your friends or significant other, we’ll be covering it all. This is the first installment of the series. Make sure to click on the High School Relationships category for more coverage. 

On the outside, the marriage between Otis and Molly Seals can be looked at as a typical relationship; Omaha natives teaching in the same district doesn’t seem too unlikely. Though as normal as their marriage may be now, their road to marriage started in high school and has now seemingly defied the stereotypes of short-lived high school relationships.

The journey for the two began inside the walls of Westside when Otis was 17 and Molly was 15.

“We met here at Westside in the cafeteria,” Otis said. “I think I was talking about how good peanut butter M&M’s were and I think she thought that was cute how much I loved those things. So we started talking after that.”

At that point, the connection was formed and Dec. 17, 2005 the two officially started dating. Despite now being married, neither Molly had no Otis had expectations of dating long term.

“I’m not going to lie, I thought we would only be together for a few months maybe,” Molly said. “I was only a sophomore and relationships didn’t normally seem to last too long when we were so young.”

Otis was on the same page.

“I didn’t think about it too long term obviously,” Otis said. “High school relationships never seem to last at that point, anyway.”

Still, the two remained together through high school and into college. As Otis recalls, there was the occasional bump in the road but he refers to their relationship as “nine years pretty consecutively” even when the two attended different colleges.

“It was a pretty big adjustment when he went to college my senior year,” Molly said. “Even though he was only in Blair, [Nebr.] we went from seeing each other daily to only on the weekends. Then, things really changed when I was going to college at Iowa Western. There was a lot more we had on our plates.”

Eventually, as in many long-term relationships, the two began considering marriage, and on April 20, 2012 this consideration became a reality as Seals proposed to Molly a little under six and a half years after their first conversation in the Westside cafeteria regarding peanut butter M&M’s.

To Molly, the proposal itself was one way out of the ordinary.

“[The proposal] was the most embarrassing thing ever,” Molly said. “He had me pulled over by a cop and the cop started writing me ticket when Otis walked up and asked me to get out of the car. I was so frustrated at the time, because I was upset that I was being pulled over, that I had no idea what was going on when he walked up to my window.”

Soon after approaching the window, Otis finally proposed. The whole thing was caught on video by Otis’s aunt, a police sergeant.

June 7, 2014, the two tied the knot. After being together for nearly nine years, they were finally together forever. Several people who knew the couple throughout their relationship knew this would come. According to Molly, the two heard “it’s about time” and “we knew it” many times.

“It was surprising for a lot of people because you typically don’t see high school relationships last these days,” Otis said. “I know long term high school relationships are hard to come and they are few and far between if at all, so I knew we were outside the norm.”

According to a statistic from brandongaille.com, less than two percent of marriages are high school sweethearts. As for the couple, they were ecstatic about being apart of the two percent.

“Honestly…we are a perfect match.” Molly said. “We balance each other out and understand one another. He is caring, loving, and makes me laugh…Whenever I pictured my future, he was always the one by my side.”