WEST SPRINGFIELD – Take a step back in time at the Big E, and you might find a Westfield couple whose own marriage started there.

Susan and Mike Dubilo had been talking on the phone for many months before she decided to return to New England from Virginia to meet him. When she arrived in early 2014, their first date was to the Storrowton Meetinghouse on the grounds of the Eastern States Exposition. Little did Susan know that those fairgrounds would represent a significant part of their lives going forward.

On that first date, after meeting on OK Cupid and having gotten to know her over a distance, Mike proposed, and she said yes. Susan was originally from Connecticut, but had moved to Virginia. Mike had grown up in Chicopee and had attended the Big E for many years, as is tradition in many Western Massachusetts households.

The couple now lives in Westfield. Even after their engagement, the Big E fairgrounds would play an important role in their lives.

On a whim one day, Susan had purchased a newspaper where she saw an ad for a contest to have a free wedding in Storrowton Village on the Big E fairgrounds. Susan and Mike wrote an essay together explaining why they should have the wedding and what the Big E already meant to them. To their surprise, they won.

On Valentine’s Day, 2014, the Big E hosted their wedding for free, with music, a pastor, flowers and a lunch in Storrowton Village for the couple and their families.

Later that year, Susan would attend the Eastern States Exposition for the first time as a volunteer. She and Mike dress up and play the parts of a typical person living during the 1770s in New England. They sit in their respective buildings during the fair and talk to visitors about what life would have been like during that time in a real village like Storrowton, and how Storrowton Village itself came to be.

Susan sits in the Potter Mansion, and Mike can be found in the meetinghouse, each of them volunteering for six, four hour shifts throughout the fair.

“I sit in the parlor and talk about how the parlor was a place women met because they didn’t go to the tavern,” said Susan.

Susan and Mike Dubilo enjoy the prospect of meeting people during the Big E. They likely each encounter thousands of different people during the Big E every year, though Susan said that there has been a noticeable lull in the number of people this year.

After missing the fair entirely in 2020 due to the pandemic, the Dubilos decided that they felt comfortable making the return for 2021.

The Big E continues daily through Oct. 3 at the fairground on Memorial Avenue in West Springfield.