The Way We Met: Aimee and Jordan Charlet
As told by Aimee Charlet
We met on December 24, 1996, in the most unlikely of
holiday settings: the Acadian Ambulance station. I was stretched out on the sofa, grabbing a rare moment of quiet, when suddenly the door swung open and in walked Jordan, full of confidence, mischief, and absolutely zero hesitation.
Before I could even sit up, he jumped right on top of me.
My first thought wasn’t love at first sight. It wasn’t even interest. It was: “Who does he think he is?”
Jordan was known around town since he worked for his family’s funeral home as the local undertaker, and he was also a member of the Clinton Volunteer Fire Department.
His family had a tradition of hosting whatever Acadian crew was working on holidays, so our paths crossed over and over again that year. Little run-ins, quick conversations, familiar smiles... all the little moments that don’t seem important at the time but quietly stitch two lives closer.
Then came that hot July day in Clinton, Louisiana.
I was working as a paramedic when a terrible wreck occurred on Plank Road — multiple critical patients, chaos, heat, adrenaline. We treated and loaded the critical patients: some flown out on AirMed, others carried off in another ambulance. By the time it was my turn to transport the two non-critical patients, I was exhausted but still in that focused medic mode.
As I leaned over to load the last patient onto the stretcher, I kissed the foreheads of the firefighters who had been helping me on scene as a simple gesture of thanks.
My patient, watching this whole parade of chaos and tenderness, looked at me and said in the most perfect, comedic tone:
“Could you stop flirting with these firemen and get me to the hospital?”
And then, in classic Jordan style, he chimed in:
“Hey, guess what? I’m single.”My response?
Not swooning.
Not starry-eyed.
Just: “Whoopie doo.”
But then I added, almost without thinking, “We’re going out this weekend for my birthday if you want to join us.”
He did.
And that was the beginning.
From that point on, the run-ins faded into real time together with laughter, calls, dates, long talks, and the quiet certainty that this was becoming something bigger.
We got engaged on May 5, 1999, and on February 26, 2000, we sealed the promise that had begun years before on a holiday shift at an ambulance station, with a jump onto a sofa and a spark that neither of us saw coming.
The rest, truly, is history.
