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Decades after summertime fling at camp, Tampa couple reunites on Match.com

 
Kim and Evan Leach married this March. They reunited in 2013 on Match.com, decades after their summer fling at a YMCA camp in North Carolina. [Photo courtesy of Julien LB Photography Paris]
Kim and Evan Leach married this March. They reunited in 2013 on Match.com, decades after their summer fling at a YMCA camp in North Carolina. [Photo courtesy of Julien LB Photography Paris]
Published July 25, 2016

TAMPA — A long bus ride home from summer camp sparked a Tampa love story that needed 25 years to reach its next chapter.

Kim and Evan Leach, both 43, married in Paris this March. They had first made eyes at each other as teenagers during a YMCA camp in North Carolina, but fell out of touch soon after they returned home — Kim to Brandon and Evan to South Tampa.

They spent their adult lives in the Tampa Bay area, each marrying and divorcing before turning to Match.com for companionship.

"We were literally right under each other's noses the whole time and never crossed paths," Kim Leach said.

Their chance encounter on the dating website happened in the nick of time, just before their subscriptions were set to expire.

They first met at the YMCA Blue Ridge Leaders' School when they were 14 or 15. Kim was immediately smitten. She recalled sharing her blanket with Evan on the bus ride home.

"It was very kind of flattering and fun," Kim said. "It was my summer crush, our summer crush."

Kim, now a brand manager for Coca-Cola, described the teens as naive enough that they believed they'd stay in touch when they got home.

They did, a couple of times.

The not again until the hit on Match.com in late 2013.

Kim said she immediately knew Evan was her crush from 30 years earlier. She was afraid of scaring him off if she asked him right away but bucked up and did it anyway.

Their first date was largely spent "just pinning it all together," said Evan Leach, 43, a manager with the Florida Department of Children and Families.

The camp in North Carolina had a couple hundred kids and the decades had fogged their memories.

But one thing was clear, Evan Leach said: "How crazy it was that we were reconnecting."

They learned they had recently lived within two miles of each other. Their season tickets for University of South Florida football games were only four rows apart. They even shared some mutual friends.

Now that they're married, their friends beg for them to tell and re-tell the love story that was put on hold. The newlyweds don't mind accommodating them because they find the experience uplifting.

"It's all about timing," Kim said. "People come in and out of your lives at a certain point with different roles."

Contact Samuel Howard at showard@tampabay.com or (813) 226-3373. Follow @SamuelHHoward.