Forty-one years ago at just about this time of the morning, this guy (who was neither Amish nor an Abraham Lincoln impersonator) nervously arrived at 575 Madison Avenue for his first day on staff at Marvel Comics (as this date was a Monday that year) …

… where he met this gal, who’d started work at Marvel Comics two months earlier.

One thing led to another, and the Sparkling One and the Impish One (seen here in photos from the 1975 Mighty Marvel Convention Program Book) eventually became an item …

… and not just a metaphorical one either, as evidenced by the ITEM! published in every Marvel Comic with a March 1977 cover date.

Well, here it is, 41 years later, and though my time working for Marvel Comics is long over, my time with the Impish one continues on, for June 24, 1974 was indeed the day everything changed … for the better … in far more ways than one.