Johnny and Chrissy Matthews: Their Wild Adventure

Published: April 13, 2021

In honor of Valentine's Day, we asked alumni sweethearts to share their stories. Chrissy Matthews '98 shares how she met Johnny Matthews '98 during her freshmen year at Greenville College. Johnny is the senior database administrator and an adjunct instructor at Greenville College.

Chrissy's Story: Johnny and I met in our freshman music theory class. I always say that he was the brilliant student sitting in the front of the class; I was the one who snuck in late and sat in the back of the class. He actually earned his degree in music I changed my major!

Johnny asked me out during the second semester of our freshman year. Our first date was on February 15, 1995. He took me to Pizza Hut, then to hang out in 4th Ladue (it was the music department domain at the time), and then, gasp, to a Bible study.

Dating in Greenville, at the time, was pretty boring because there was nothing to do in town! We went for walks to the local parks and ate Mario's (of course). We hung out in the DC or in lower Armington. We watched a lot of movies and lived for open dorm hours on Thursday nights. For our "fancy dates, we went to St. Louis or Fairview Heights to see movies and go out to dinner. We were wild, I know.

We got married during our junior year, and we graduated in 1998. Since graduating, we have chosen to stay in Greenville where Johnny works at the College and I am a stay-at-home Mom. We've devoted the majority of our time to raising a family. Our most wild adventure has been becoming foster parents and ultimately adoptive parents, leaving us with a grand total of seven children!