He was a football star, and she was a cheerleader. James Michael Mahoney and Diana Blackburn fell in love on campus and had their first kiss outside of South Court in 1973.

“That's how it started,” Mahoney said. “And, it just blossomed from there.”

They went to Villa Pizza once a week as their date night.

“We had, like, $3.25 between us, so we had a pizza,” Mahoney said. “And if we had another dollar, we'd get a pitcher of beer. And that was it. That's what you did.”

The pair were the “it” couple their senior year at the University of Richmond, but when Mahoney was drafted by the New York Giants and Blackburn was hired as one of the first women on Procter & Gamble’s sales force, they went their separate ways. 

She fell in love with someone else and was planning her wedding only a few years later. Meanwhile, he played for the Giants, then the Minnesota Vikings.

But two weeks before Diana’s wedding, she got a phone call. “I begged her, please don’t do this,” Mahoney said.

She thought he was crazy. “Everything is planned, I'm doing this. I'm getting married.”

And she did, but the marriage ended in divorce. Eight years later, Mahoney was in Richmond visiting, and they met for dinner. He was moving to Florida to start his own business, and he wanted Blackburn to join him.

“I asked her to come to Florida with me. But, I didn't say the magic words, ‘Come marry me,’” he said.

“And that was the trick,” she said.

He went to Florida on his own, and this time he was the one who married, but it fizzled. “I always only ever cared about Diana,” he said.

Nearly 30 years went by. She reached out to his brother online, and he helped reconnect the two. “Truthfully, I never stopped loving him.”

They talked for a few months, and Mahoney decided it was finally time to move back to Richmond.

That was in 2011. They are now both retired and just had their 11^th wedding anniversary. They celebrated by taking a walk together on campus, and getting a pizza and a pitcher of beer.