Friends Kari Kellmann, Megan Zanocco and Jenna Matus embrace their single life and say they don’t feel pressure (or would ignore it if they did) to get married.
Zanocco, a 23-year-old special-education teacher, just bought a house in Rockford. She’s working on her master’s degree and said she wants to establish her own life before getting married and having children.
“I’m not in a hurry,” Zanocco said. “I’m just 23. I want to develop myself, and definitely, 100 percent do my own thing.” Kellmann, 24, and her friends like to go out on the weekends, and she envisions meeting her mate through her one of those friends.
“I’m definitely happy being single,” Kellmann said. “I’d much rather be single now. I think with our generation, there’s a higher number of singles because we can be more financially independent and we can be more self-reliant than past generations.”
Friend Cassie Brandon, 24, of Loves Park is taking the plunge in July after she got engaged to Kyle Truax in November. They met at Rockford College.
“I always knew I wanted to get married, but I wanted to wait until I was out of college and had a steady job,” Brandon said. “When I started dating my fiance, I wasn’t necessarily looking for marriage, but it led to it.”
Women such as Patricia Chavez, 30, of Rockford are searching for a specific guy and a certain social scene, which she says she has a better chance of finding in Chicago and the suburbs.
“As far as marriage, at first I was like ‘yes, yes, yes.’ But now I’m OK if I don’t get married. I’m not so hung up on it anymore because I realized marriage isn’t a guarantee,” Chavez said.
Small-business owner Vickie Escalante, 31, of Rockford has never been married but said she really hasn’t dated much. She lamented how young people are often restricted to meeting at a bar.
“I feel like people say the only place to find somebody is at a bar, but I don’t do that,” Escalante said. “I don’t think the single scene is very good in Rockford, but I’m also not the most ambitious, either.”
Shauna Boone, 26, of Roscoe, also doesn’t have a timeline for marriage.
“I’m pretty independent,” Boone said. “My parents both brought my sister and I up to do things on our own and not have to rely on somebody else for everything.”
Aimee Kuelling, 33, of Rockford said finding a husband has been slow-going, mainly because she keeps busy with work, volunteering, kick-boxing classes and the occasional night out with friends. She also beams about caring for her 5-year-old son, whom she has custody of every other week.
“Life is different for me from week to week,” Kuelling said. “I’m a single mom one week and a single woman the next week. It’s like two different lives ... I’m not having a lot of luck finding people in the area, but I’m realistic. I realize it’s harder to find true love in a 10-mile radius, but I can’t maintain a relationship that’s 100 miles away.”
Christyn Rittenhouse, 39, of Rockford wants to establish a singles volunteer network because she’s excited about downtown development and the resurgence of young professionals. She’s been divorced for 11 years, but tries to stay positive about meeting someone new.
“I’d love to get married again, but I’m not going to do it just to do it,” Rittenhouse said. “I’ll only marry the right person.”
-- Melissa Westphal, Rockford Register Star
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