She tricked her mom into meeting her Hardaway gym teacher. Now, they’re engaged.

She showed her gym teacher a photo of her mother. Seven years later, they’re engaged. But it took a ruse to get them together. In time for Valentine’s Day, here’s their love story.

The characters

Lauren Breaux, 23, is in her first year as a special-education paraprofessional at Hardaway High School. She graduated from Hardaway in 2013.

Lauren’s mother, Linda Breaux, 43, is a manager in the Integrated Knowledge Solutions Department at Aflac, where she has worked for 23 years. She graduated from Hardaway in 1993 and from Columbus College with a bachelor’s degree in psychology in 2017.

Kendall Mills, 46, is athletics director, boys basketball coach and girls volleyball coach at Hardaway. He has taught health and physical education there for 15 years and 21 years overall. He graduated from Opelika High School in 1990 and from Auburn University in 1996 with a bachelor’s degree in elementary education and from Troy University in 2010 with a master’s degree in sports and fitness management.

“Three individuals had three different views of that night,” Kendall said with a laugh while recalling the time he met Linda. “Lauren had her agenda, Linda had her agenda, and I had an agenda. And here we are now, years later, a family.”

The setup

In February 2012, during the spring semester of her junior year, Lauren was failing Kendall’s health and physical education class because she refused to dress in gym clothes.

“He was docking points every time I didn’t dress out,” Lauren said. “. . . I had him like third period, and I didn’t want to dress out and be dirty throughout the rest of the school day.”

One of Lauren’s friends, who was on Kendall’s girls basketball team, told her that he wasn’t married. Lauren’s mother also was single.

“Disregarding him failing me,” Lauren said with a laugh, “he was a really good teacher, and I liked his personality. He’s really outgoing, and my mom’s kind of shy and timid sometimes, so I thought maybe he could bring some fun into her life.”

Lauren’s friend told Kendall, “You need to go out with Lauren’s mom.”

So he asked to see a photo of her. Lauren showed him on her phone.

Kendall was impressed.

“Once I looked at the screen,” he said, “I was like, ‘OK, I’ve got to make this happen.’ . . . She was beautiful, just breathtaking.”

“He said she was pretty,” Lauren said. “. . . He was like, ‘Oh, wow.’”

Kendall suggested Lauren should bring her mother to the spaghetti dinner fundraiser for the girls basketball team they were going to have in the school’s cafeteria the next night.

“Dinner’s on me,” he told her. “I’ll get dinner for the entire family. Whatever it takes. Get your mom here.”

The ruse

After picking up Lauren from tennis practice, Linda heard her daughter break the news about her failing grade in health/PE.

To convince her mother to attend the spaghetti dinner, Lauren said she would get extra credit if she would accompany her. That was a fib – but Linda agreeing to show up eventually gave all three of them a different kind of extra credit.

Not wise to the ruse, Linda fussed at Lauren during the drive back to Hardaway, upset about her daughter failing health/PE and having to attend this event.

Kendall didn’t know that Lauren had fooled Linda, but he knew that was his failing student’s mother striding in high heels across the cafeteria toward him.

“I was nervous,” he recalled. “Sweaty palms. You know, just that nervous anxiety of, ‘I’m about to meet this woman for the first time.’”

And she clearly wasn’t happy about being there.

“She probably was coming to fuss at me,” he thought.

Linda asked Kendall, “Where do I sign in for extra credit?”

Kendall replied, “Extra credit? I’m the extra credit.”

Linda recalled, “I thought it was kind of funny, but I was looking at Lauren like, ‘What are you talking about?’”

Lauren introduced Linda to Kendall, telling him, “Coach Mills, this is my mom I showed you.”

Linda, taken aback, asked, “You showed him me?”

“Yeah,” Lauren confessed, “on Facebook.”

Kendall went along with the prank.

“Lauren does have a problem with her grade,” he told Linda, “but there’s a way we can work this out.”

Despite being initially mad at the circumstances Lauren put her in, Linda calmed down as Kendall charmed her that night.

“There was something about him,” Linda said. “When I looked at him, he just had like a really sweet smile, sweet demeanor, and so when he smiled and laughed, I was kind of OK. I was like, ‘OK, he’s kind of cute.’”

So they exchanged phone numbers.

During the drive home with Lauren, Linda told her daughter she wasn’t sure about trying to date again.

Lauren argued, “Well, Mommy, everybody thinks he’s such a cool guy.”

Linda relented, “I’ll give it a shot. We’ll see. But I can’t believe you did this.”

The first date

The next night, they went on their first date. They met at Outback Steakhouse for dinner. Then they went to a movie, “Red Tails,” then to a bar, the Sports Page, for drinks and appetizers.

“He couldn’t get enough of me,” Linda said with a laugh.

“I don’t think either one of us wanted it to end,” Kendall said. “We just enjoyed each other’s company. We just talked and talked and talked. I mean, we probably talked through the movie.”

It was past midnight when Linda came home, but Lauren waited up for her.

“She was really happy,” Lauren said.

Lauren recalled her mother telling her that Kendall is “handsome” and “really funny” and “very outgoing” and made her laugh.

“She didn’t tell me much, because I was only a junior,” Lauren said. “But from what I heard and how she acted, and when they got on the phone right when she came home, it seemed like they had a really good time together.”

Kendall followed Linda home that night. He insisted he just wanted to ensure she safely arrived.

“No intentions,” he said.

“I think it was very chivalrous,” Lauren said. “I don’t think it was creepy.”

Linda recalled Lauren’s reaction, “I think, at that point, she was shocked. I thought she felt her joke was going a little too far. She didn’t expect it to actually turn into a thing.”

The post-date analysis

The next day at Aflac, Linda told some of her coworkers, “I finally had gone on a date with somebody.’ They were pretty excited about that.”

Linda admitted she Googled his name to “make sure he’s not a crazy person.” She also learned more about Kendall’s background from the mother of one of Lauren’s friends, who ensured her, “You’re going to love him. Y’all will be perfect together.”

She couldn’t find any dirt on him.

“That was pretty much the consensus,” Linda said. “Anyone I was able to talk to (about Kendall). They were like, ‘He’s such a good guy.’”

Beyond their physical attraction, Linda and Kendall connected in other ways on their first date.

“I think we just had like an instant connection,” Linda said. “It wasn’t even just a physical thing; it was truly just like on more of a spiritual level.”

Linda was attracted to Kendall’s “passion for the kids. It’s very evident if you watch him coach or just listen to him talk about what he does. He truly loves it.”

Kendall learned that Linda is “a caring individual, loving, four kids she was raising on her own.”

Back at school in Kendall’s class, Lauren didn’t hear any report about her mother from her gym teacher – and she didn’t ask.

“He probably tried to keep it low profile,” Lauren said.

Linda and Kendall have been together ever since.

“It was a very lovely courtship,” Kendall said.

The courtship

Dating for Linda then was “very difficult,” she said. “I’d gone through several instances of trying to date and not finding someone.”

Linda had been divorced for about two years by then, and Kendall had been divorced for twice as long, and both had been unlucky in the dating game.

“My success rate was terrible,” she said with a laugh.

Kendall didn’t date much, but he was more focused on his coaching career. For seven years, he coached the boys and girls basketball teams, plus the volleyball team, at the same time. He ate by himself four nights per week at Applebee’s, treating himself to the half-price appetizers after 9 p.m.

“I wasn’t afraid of getting involved with anyone,” he said. “There just wasn’t a spark with anyone.”

He found the spark in Linda.

“She would come to the gym at the end of practice,” he said. “… Basically, she almost became like the team mom.”

So this fast pace of falling in love was joyful and scary at the same time for them.

Linda wondered, “Is it too good to be true? I was always looking for what’s wrong. . . . And that didn’t really happen.”

But it wasn’t complete bliss.

“Everything isn’t perfect, but, for the most part, the cliché is the good days outweigh the bad days,” she said. “That’s for sure.”

“Maybe she was being impatient and I was being stubborn,” Kendall said. “I was still engulfed in my career and being selfish, being foolish. … I begged her for a chance, and I was blessed.”

Linda said, “There were times when we weren’t on the same page. But, inevitably, we couldn’t be apart.”

Kendall concurred.

“We would talk about whatever, but we weren’t communicating,” he said. “… You’ve just got to lay it all out there. When I came to that realization, it maybe shocked her, because I said, ‘I’m done. I have to tell you everything.’”

So they started writing a combined journal, writing messages to each other back and forth in a notebook they leave on their kitchen table.

“The negative, the positive, whatever it was,” Kendall said.

Lauren, meanwhile, figured her mother and gym teacher would persevere through the rough spots.

“From the way she would invite him to family gatherings and how they would react to each other,” she said, “I kind of knew they were going to end up getting married.”

So did her friends. Noticing her mother showing up at school more often, they told Lauren, “Coach Mills is going to be your step-daddy.”

Her response: “Y’all are probably right.”

About a year after they started dating, Linda began thinking about the possibility of marrying Kendall.

“We were doing so good,” she said, “it was almost like, ‘Don’t mess it up.’ So I was kind of OK with letting it ride the way it was.”

Kendall said, “I wasn’t sure we needed to be married. I thought we would just be together, and then you realize, ‘Why shouldn’t she have my last name? Why can’t this be official?’”

The proposal

In June 2018, during a break at a Columbus State University basketball camp, Kendall shopped for an engagement ring. Linda’s birthday was the next day, so he bought one that was available in the store, understanding they could get it resized if it didn’t fit.

To celebrate Linda’s birthday, Kendall suggested inviting her whole family to go out to dinner at the Mikata Japanese restaurant. Linda was reluctant, because she doesn’t like a lot of attention for her birthday and she was tired from her day at work, but she agreed.

At the restaurant, Linda noticed a box in Kendall’s pocket. “Something’s going on,” she thought. So she asked him about it. Kendall said it was nothing and headed to the restroom.

“It was nerve-wracking,” Kendall said. “I didn’t know what she was going to say.”

When he returned, Kendall stood at the table and declared he had an announcement to make. He jokingly said he was fixing to move out of town to pursue another coaching job and he would like to take Linda with him.

“You’ve got to be kidding me,” Linda thought. “You never said anything about this.”

Kendall asked Linda’s children whether their mother could go with him. Then he got down on one knee, took out the engagement ring and asked her to marry him.

Linda hesitated. She told him, “I thought you didn’t want to do this.”

He asked, “Are you saying yes?”

“Yes.”

“It’s about time,” Lauren thought.

But she wasn’t surprised.

“I kind of knew it was happening when he started talking his little speech,” Lauren said.

Of course, everyone at the table asked for clarification about the pending move. Kendall simply said he didn’t know how to start the proposal and that’s what came out of his mouth.

Kendall bought the ring without consulting Linda.

“He did a pretty good job,” she said.

Looking back, Kendall explained the timing for his proposal.

“That was the moment,” he said. “Everything we had gone through and been together, the timing was right.”

Epilogue

Their wedding date is March 23, the same date Linda’s parents got married. The ceremony will be at their house in Columbus. Their honeymoon, during spring break in the Muscogee County School District, will be a trip to Germany, France and Italy.

If she could advise others who have had trouble finding love, Linda said, “Just relax. A lot of times, my single friends are on edge. They’re always looking. When I wasn’t looking, that’s when I found it.”

Kendall’s advice is similar: “If you like the girl, you like her. Don’t worry about playing the field. Just enjoy being with that girl.”

Kendall put the impact of meeting Linda in stark terms.

“She saved my life,” he said and repeated, “She saved my life. I owe her the world, and I love her.”

Then he explained.

“Just her spirit, just seeing her every day,” he said, “it makes waking up easier; it makes going home easier; it makes life easier. It’s not complicated.”

Oh, and by the way, Lauren didn’t fail Kendall’s class. After he started dating her mother, Lauren was motivated to dress in gym clothes enough to pass.

Mark Rice, 706-576-6272, @MarkRiceLE.

This story was originally published February 14, 2019 at 12:00 AM.