St. Luke's Sweethearts.
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t. Luke’s SEO for UX-Designed Website Interns Taylor Jackson and Cammie Waite reached out to alums still with their high school sweethearts. Taylor interviewed Vincent Oberkirch, who married his St. Luke’s sweetheart, Lauren Oberkirch. They began dating their senior year of high school and were both in St. Luke’s first graduating class (2013). The couple got engaged in July 2018 and married in October 2019. Lauren is now a speech-language pathologist at Singing River Hospital and Vincent is an electronic engineer at the Department of Defense. With their dog Louie, they reside in Ocean Springs, Mississippi. Read more about their love story below.
Taylor Jackson:How did the two of y'all meet at St. Luke's?
Vincent Oberkirch:
We met at orientation at camp grace but didn’t really get to know each other till we started classes together.
TJ: How many years have y’all been together?
VO: We have been together for ten years!
TJ: What were your first memory of each other?
VO: We use to pass notes back and forth in Mrs. Banks's
Spanish class.
TJ: What was a typical date night for you two when you were in high school?
VO: A typical date night was going out to dinner or a movie. We use to walk Laurens dog Blue at a park near Fairhope pier just about every weekend.
TJ: What made your relationship work so well for so long?
VO: One of the things that has made our relationship work so well is the amount of support we give each other.Whether itwas sporting events in high school, tough classes in college, or difficult career decisions we are always there for each other.
TJ: Did you go to the same college? If not, what was it like to go from seeing him/her each
day in high school to only occasionally in college?
VO: For the first two years of college we
were at different universities. It wasn’t difficult because we always made time for each other. We both ended up graduating from University of South Alabama.
TJ:Favorite memories from St. Luke’s with your significant other?
VO: We had a marine biology class together senior year.One of our class assignments was to catch fish at dauphin island and put them in individual aquariums to study. Lauren had a fish that seemed sick and decided to put it in my aquarium, thinking it would get better. Her sick fish ended up killing every fish in my aquarium.
TJ:Did you go to prom or hoco dances together? What were they like “back then”?
VO: Yes! We went to homecoming and prom together. Homecoming dances were in the school
cafeteria and the prom was at a hotel ballroom in downtown Mobile. Our friend group
used to meet at someone’s house before the dance where we would eat and take
pictures. The dance was small since we only had around 40 people in our graduating class, but we always had a great time.
TJ: Anything else you would like the school to know?
VO: We wanted to give a big thank you to all of the teachers and faculty that had to put up with our crazy high
school class. We are thankful for all of the great memories we have of St Luke’s. Go Wildcats!