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Engaged by Thursday after a run
Jim Collins and Joanne both graduated from high school in Boulder, Colorado, and both ended up at Stanford, she a year behind him. A friend named Roger, his climbing partner and her high school cross-country coach and physics teacher, kept telling them they needed to get together. Nothing happened for years.
In his senior year Joanne called. He mentioned he was thinking of upping his mileage, which was technically true since any mileage above zero is an increase, and she invited him to run on Sunday at eight outside her dorm. He turned up in a rugby shirt and climbing shorts. She asked whether he needed to change, he said no, and she took him on an eight-mile run that started with three miles uphill.
They walked five of the eight miles. By Thursday they were engaged, in May of 1980. Each had faced challenges growing up, and both had an instinct that the other could go all in and never blink. They have been married for 39 years.
What did Jim Collins write after Stanford?
Collins co-authored Built to Last in 1994 with Jerry Porras, a study of enduring visionary companies. He published Good to Great in 2001, which examined companies that made a sustained leap in results. His later books include How the Mighty Fall in 2009 and Great by Choice in 2011.
Why does a hard shared effort bond people?
In a 1974 experiment by the psychologists Donald Dutton and Arthur Aron, men who met an interviewer on a high, swaying suspension bridge were more likely to call her afterward than men who met her on a low, solid bridge. The researchers proposed that people misread the arousal from a physical challenge as attraction. The study became a standard reference for how shared intense experiences shape feelings between people.
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