Since the Agency’s founding, many officers have found relationships through work connections. “Why?” you might ask. Well, sometimes it is easier not having to dive into the age-old dating question, “So, what do you do?” when you are both sworn to secrecy.
Here are a few of the CIA love stories that we’ve captured over the years.
- While working as a security escort at CIA, in 1989 I met my husband who was an IT contractor working for the Agency. We were engaged by the end of the year and got married right after I graduated from college in 1992.
- My parents met at the Agency. They worked together for a few years in the 1970s. He left for an overseas assignment and she moved into a new position. They crossed paths again in the 1980s when they ran into each other at Headquarters. Seven children later, here I am!
- After meeting at CIA in 1970, my parents went on a date and got married a few months later. In 2021, they celebrated 50 years of marriage.
- My now-husband and I attended our initial CIA orientation together. Our first real interaction was during a classroom training exercise. Flash-forward to a year later when we start dating seriously and a non-Agency friend asks where and when we first met. I came up with the most boring thing I could think of: we met at a bar through mutual friends when I first came to DC. To this day, this is the story we tell our friends and family members who don’t know where we work. Just a funny quirk of dating when covert.
- When my dad graduated from high school in Western Pennsylvania in 1961, he moved to northern Virginia and joined the CIA as a file clerk. A couple years later, my mom, who is also from Western Pennsylvania, graduated from high school and moved to a boarding house in northern Virginia when she joined the Agency’s secretarial pool. The story goes that my dad’s office needed a secretary one day and sent my dad to get one. My mom was assigned. For a while, my dad would go to the secretarial pool and get my mom to bring her back to the office. Eventually, they started dating and got married.
- My parents met at the Agency. From what I’ve been told, when my parents met, my mother worked as a clerk and provided data for my father’s office. Apparently, my father went to visit my mother for information so frequently that his office started calling her desk to request his whereabouts.
- Silly true story about how I met my husband at CIA Headquarters.
Him: “Do you know why I pulled you over today?”
Me: “Oh sure, I totally blew through that stop sign. Wasn’t graceful at all, was it?!” *cheesy grin*
I drive fast. Too fast. I won’t lie (also, I can’t, clearance and all…), I’ve been pulled over three times on the Agency compound. It’d be embarrassing if it hadn’t introduced me to my future husband the last (and final, I promise) time.
Albeit the picture of uniformed professionalism throughout the traffic stop, the Security Protective Service officer that day was a smidge taken with this girl driving a Honda Civic like the sports car it definitely was not. He was also shocked (read: impressed) I freely admitted my blunder – apparently, this isn’t common. Who knew?
Lucky for him, I had vast experience being pulled over and readily admitting my faults.
He gracefully let me go with a warning, but not without my success getting him to crack a smile.
Fast forward three months, I drove to a friend’s cookout. Greeting my close friends, one mentions I should talk to her old high school buddy.
Me: “Hi.”
Him: “Hey.”
Me: “… soo, where do you work?”
Him: “Where do YOU work?”
Me: “Um…”
Him: “Do you drive a white Honda?”
Me: “Er… yeeeahhh…,” glancing down the street at the offending vehicle.
Him: “Did you happen to get stopped a few months ago?”
That’s when I saw it. The flicker of the grin I fought for through my window months before.
That was 2012. We got married in 2016.
- My parents met working at CIA. They initially met each other while getting sodas from a vending machine on the first floor of Headquarters. My mom told a friend that she thought my dad was cute, and the friend set them up. The rest is history. They’ve lived in four countries together.
- I first met my fiancé during a work class. We had lunch together but then didn’t really talk much after that. I met him again at a work friend’s party a year later. We hung out a bit but nothing much came of it. Six months later I met him AGAIN at another work friend’s BBQ. He walked up to me and said, “So there’s this guy following me around and I should probably finally ask him out.” Without skipping a beat, I replied, “Really? Sounds like a lucky guy.” We dated for two years, and now we’re engaged.