MJ Seide never thought that she would live a happy, fulfilling life. Then she met her future partner, who at the time had been married to a man and raising children. MJ remembers how it felt to fall in love, and to get to know her new extended family.

Sue McConnell and Kristyn Weed are best friends and Vietnam-era veterans. Although they didn’t serve in the war together, they share a story of courage — on and off the battlefield. They met at a transgender veterans’ support group and became inseparable members of a powerful, enduring sisterhood.

In 2018, at the age of 63, Dee Westenhauser came out as a transgender woman. But growing up in El Paso, Texas in the 1950s, she had a hard time fitting in. Dee remembers how her Aunt Yaya gave her an opportunity that no one else would: a safe, loving space to be herself.

In Brooklyn in the late 1950s, Jay McKnight and his friends spent summer evenings outside, singing a cappella. One night, Jay caught the ear of a girl named Andrea. Watch Jay and Andrea McKnight share their childhood romance, growing up and growing old together.

John Banvard and Jerry Nadeau are military veterans who served in World War II and Vietnam, respectively. John, 100, and Jerry, 72, sat down at the veterans home where they live to reflect on nearly 25 years together.

In 1989, Tabinda Sheikh immigrated from the Dominican Republic and got a job in a New York City hotel as a housekeeper. It was there that she caught the eye of a fellow employee who was working behind the hotel’s front desk—Tariq Sheikh. This is the story of how they fell in love.

In the summer of 1946, Hunny Feller and her identical twin sister, Bunny, were waitresses at a hotel. Another set of identical twins, Elliot and Danny Reiken, worked as musicians in a band there. Hunny and Elliot reflect on what happened when the twins fell in love with the twins.

Cheraton Love is a liberal, and her father-in-law Jim White is conservative. Cheraton invited Jim for a conversation using the StoryCorps app at his home in Silver Valley, NC.

In 1997, Darius Clark Monroe was a high school honor student who had never been in serious trouble. But soon after his 16th birthday, he robbed a bank in Stafford, Texas at gunpoint with two of his friends. Seventeen years later, he sat down with David Ned, a customer who was in the bank during the robbery.

Jenn Stanley, a writer, and her father Peter, who works in construction, came to StoryCorps to talk about how politics affect their relationship.

In 1939, 20,000 Americans rallied in New York’s Madison Square Garden to celebrate the rise of Nazism – an event largely forgotten from American history. A Night At the Garden uses striking archival fragments recorded that night to transport modern audiences into this gathering and shine a light on the disturbing fallibility of seemingly decent people.

Lyle Link felt like a disappointment when he told his father he couldn’t follow him into farming. But he found his purpose as a lifelong partner to his wife Marion, who he remembers at StoryCorps with his granddaughter, Carly Dreher. In “New Tracks,” Lyle’s remembrances of his trailblazing life with Marion are a reminder that a great love can point the way.

Every family has a figure who captures the imagination of future generations of storytellers. For Camaran Henson, that figure is his grandfather, a former police detective he was convinced was immortal, like a superhero. Though his grandfather didn’t prove to be immortal, Camaran still considers him worthy of his legendary status--and a deserving focal point of continued storytelling.

Panchita Espitia was a formidable woman, not afraid of rattlesnakes underfoot on the Texas ranches of her youth, or of death itself. Her grandson, Bishop Ricardo Ramirez, learned this near the end of her life, when he realized some spiritual lessons can only be passed down by our elders.

Caught in a thoughtless act of cruelty, a young man learns a lesson in compassion from his father, a larger-than-life tribal leader of the Caddo Nation and a veteran of World War II. Years later, the man passes that lesson down to his own son.

The difficulties faced by same-sex couples have created far too many stories of unrequited love. Glenda Elliott’s story is one of them: Glenda came to StoryCorps to remember Lauree, the woman she fell in love with in small-town Georgia, at a time when it was difficult to imagine an acceptable path apart from marrying a man and starting a family.

From the first roll call of the 1964 school year, William Lynn Weaver was targeted by white teachers at the Tennessee high school he and 13 other black students integrated. A few weeks later, Weaver, a former high achiever, brought home a failing report card. What happened next still moves him: the intervention of an educator from his past who became the unseen hand shaping all his future success.

Ellaraino experienced a common teenage reaction when she learned she’d have to leave Los Angeles to spend the summer in Louisiana with her great-grandmother, Silvia. Less common was Ellaraino’s realization that Silvia had lived through the Civil War, and had a lot to teach her great-granddaughter about the true meaning of freedom.

Ronald Clark’s father was custodian of a branch of the New York Public Library at a time when caretakers, along with their families, lived in the buildings. With his daughter, Jamilah, Ronald remembers literally growing up in a library, creeping down to the stacks in the middle of the night when curiosity gripped him. A story for anyone who’s ever dreamt of having unrestricted access to books.

After being drafted in 1969, Tom Geerdes served as an Army medic in the 11th Armored Calvary in Vietnam and Cambodia.  Like many veterans, he returned home a changed man.  At StoryCorps, Tom shared his long journey toward healing with his daughter, Hannah Campbell.