It’s a classic high school rom-com setup: the football star and the artsy theater kid.
But one woman has gone viral for proving that, in her case, this love story would have never happened—despite her husband’s insistence otherwise. In an Instagram reel, Caila Quinn Burrello, 33, revealed high school photos to prove her point that she and her husband couldn’t have been more different.
She spoke to Newsweek about her relationship, and what reflecting on this time has shown her.
“My husband says we would’ve dated in high school,” Quinn Burrello captioned the video. “He played football and wore Abercrombie and Fitch. I played witches in musicals and wore ties over tank tops like Avril Lavigne.”
@cailaquinn/Instagram
As a self-proclaimed Warped Tour-loving theater girl who dressed like the punk princess, Quinn Burrello said she couldn’t imagine dating someone like her husband, a football team captain who later went on to play at Harvard.
“I think I laughed so hard that I almost choked on my coffee when my husband said he thought we would have dated in high school!” she said. “I still to this day think he is just being nice, but that is my sweet Midwestern guy for you—letting me believe in an alternate universe that our love story could have been a Disney Channel movie from the early 2000s.”
That didn’t stop her from imagining what could have been.
“I would have definitely had a crush on him from afar,” she admitted. “But back in those days, I thought only cheerleaders could date football players, because that’s what all the ’90s movies taught me.”
While she doubts their paths would have ever crossed in a romantic way, she did entertain one possibility.
“I might have mustered up the courage to ask him out senior year before prom, because I had nothing to lose, but I guess we’ll never know,” she said.
Opposites Still Attract
Despite their wildly different high school personas, the couple—who now live in Austin, Texas, with their two kids—have found that their past selves still influence their relationship.
“Even though decades have passed, the ‘All-American athlete’ in Nick and the ‘fun-loving theater girl’ in me still come out in our 30s from time to time,” Quinn Burrello said. “Whenever we meet up with friends to be social, Nick is always positive, encouraging, and warm like he would be with his teammates back in high school.
“I always tell Nick that I ‘bring the color’ and fun into his life—planning spontaneous trips around the world, bringing him to shows on Broadway, and blasting music in our kitchen with our two kids to make everyday life at home a blast.”
So, while their high school selves might never have been a couple, their adult selves prove that eventually, opposites really do attract.
