By Malaya Madison
Statistically, less than 2% of American Marriages are formed between High-School Sweethearts. (According to the Accolade).
College, new responsibilities, just plain growing up…there are so many things that can get in the way.
But meet Aaron and Meredith Schunk, the couple who are in this 2%. They graduated from Lovett in 2016, and their love story only continued when they left the Riverbank. I Facetimed with them at their home.
Aaron Schunk is a baseball player who originally signed with the Colorado Rockies, and in December 2025, signed with the Atlanta Braves! And Meredith has worked in the pediatric intensive care unit at the Children’s Health Care of Atlanta, and she is now back in school to become a nurse practitioner.
They have continued to watch one another grow into who they are today. “There have been so many ups and downs, but we’re doing it all together. So that’s what matters,” Meredith shared.
The two have known each other since middle school, and were in similar friend groups. Freshman year, Aaron and Meredith had hung out at numerous football games together and became closer.
2012 changed everything. Aaron asked Meredith to be his girlfriend the day after Valentine’s Day because they had plans to hang out, and he “thought it’d be cheesy to do it on Valentine’s Day,” Aaron said.
This is how the couple started dating. “We met when we were 12 or 13, started dating when we were 15. So we, we’ve been together forever, it feels like,” Aaron said.
In high school, the challenges the couple faced were mostly related to extracurricular activities.
They solved this challenge by squeezing in any time they could to see each other. “Going to the same school and being in the same grade was very beneficial,” Aaron said. “ We spent a lot of time together throughout the day, so that when those extracurriculars took up time, that was obviously time we didn’t spend together.”
Even then, the couple still ”FaceTimed a lot and spent a lot of time after school after extracurriculars, after homework, spending time with each other too.”
Their relationship has grown tremendously, just as they have individually. When asked when they knew that they could see a life with each other, Aaron shared, “I told her I wanted to marry her my senior year, so I saw it very early.”
Not only was Aaron committed to their relationship, but he was also committed to baseball at the University of Georgia in 2014.
When they started picking colleges, they realized that this commitment would take a lot of responsibility, and they didn’t want to compromise each other’s goals.
“I said that I wanted her to go wherever was going to be best for her education,” Aaron said.
Meredith went to the University of Virginia, which is 7 hours from UGA.
“We had to learn how to do the whole communication thing with long distance,” Meredith said. They told me that this was definitely the hardest part of their relationship. Aaron said it was frustrating to be apart after “four years of almost seeing each other every day with school.”
During college, communicating and visiting each other was key. Because Aaron couldn’t go up to Virginia much because of baseball, and Meredith couldn’t come down much because of her sorority and nursing school, the timing was hard.
They advised any couples going through this to “learn how to communicate really well with each other and have good expectations for your communication.”
(If you’re reading this, you should most likely take this advice, because they have been together for over a decade since freshman year.)
Aaron and Meredith have gotten married, bought a house, and welcomed a dog. “It’s kind of crazy how much of our lives we’ve been together for. We’ve seen high school, college, and started our first jobs. And, we’ve moved all around the country for baseball for him,” Meredith said.
While they’re older now, and have been through a lot, they “still feel like best friends in middle school, and still get the same butterflies.”
