Magazine Meet-Cute
More than a decade ago, a Cal Poly Magazine issue tucked in an orientation packet led to destiny for two alumni.
Maurice and Janaiah at home, showing off the magazine cover that first caught Janaiah’s attention.
When Janaiah Lundblade (MBA ’13) received her Cal Poly orientation packet, months before she started her graduate program, she didn’t realize she was going to catch a glimpse of her future. In the shuffle of brochures and paperwork was a copy of Cal Poly Magazine, and she found herself pausing to admire the athlete on the cover.
“Obviously I thought he was very handsome, so I took a picture of the orientation packet and captioned it with a subtle nod to this man being handsome and put it on my social media — and then I actually met him in a bar,” said Janaiah, who now has the last name McClure.
In the couple’s telling of the story, Janaiah was out at SLO Brew with friends when she hit on Maurice McClure (City and Regional Planning ’11), who was working as a bouncer.
She asked for his number and then made him wait next to her while she called it to make sure it was real. The couple began dating soon after.
“I like to think that my subconscious was like, ‘Oh, this is the guy! Go up and talk to him,’” Janaiah said. “It didn’t click with me until a while later that, ‘Oh my gosh, he’s on my social media. That’s going to be really mortifying if he finds out,” she added, as Maurice, now her husband, chuckled.
“I honestly thought nothing of it, because I was like, ‘Oh, this really pretty drunk girl asked for my number. She ain’t gonna remember this. She doesn’t want this.’ Then she contacts me the next day,” he said.
Janaiah finally told Maurice that she saw him for the first time in her orientation packet — not that night at SLO Brew — a few months into their relationship, and “he took it quite well,” she said.
“My first reaction was, ‘Oh my gosh, she stalked me!’” Maurice said. “But at that point, we were together for months and I was obviously in love with her, so I was like ‘Hey, I’m just glad I’m here. I’m glad we’re here — no matter how it started. But I’m telling everybody!’”
And now the world knows: a TikTok video Janaiah made about their meet-cute went viral in early June.
Maurice and Janaiah at her graduation in 2013.
The TikTok was part of a trend where people posted a video about the silliest or most embarrassing thing they’ve done for a crush, set to a slow version of Gnarls Barkley’s “Crazy.”
“I’d watched so many of them and they were hilarious,” Janaiah said. “I thought, ‘Oh, let me think about some embarrassing moments in my life that actually turned out pretty well.’”
She made the video quickly and then went to pick up her kids, unaware of how far it would spread. So far, it’s been liked by more than 324,000 people on TikTok and more than 632,000 people on Instagram.
“I was really surprised at the reception, but it was mostly positive,” she said. “Everyone took it with some humor and lightheartedness, and that was really reassuring. It made me feel great, and it was a good laugh.”
Maurice says he was on board with the post and was happy his wife wanted to be public with the story.
“I’ve always enjoyed the story of how we met, and she’s always been so embarrassed and wants me to keep it tucked away. So if she wanted to put it on social media, I said ‘absolutely,’” he said. “I love our story because it got us to where we are right now.”
The McClures now live with their three children in the Bay Area, where Janaiah works in financial technology and Maurice is an operations manager on the grocery delivery team at DoorDash. They both say the Learn by Doing philosophy continues to play a big role in their personal and professional lives.
“Even prior to getting to Cal Poly, I always liked to try and do things and if it failed, then of course that’s a learning lesson in itself,” Maurice said. “Cal Poly put a phrase to my mindset, and I carry that to work even now, where if you fail — you fail. As long as you learn something from it, that’s all that matters. That’s how we go further.”
The couple also applies the motto to Jade&Kai, the business they started together selling sustainable baby essentials — and parenting, too.
“Becoming a mother has really broadened my horizons and anchored me back to the Learn by Doing philosophy,” Janaiah said. “I think jumping into something like parenthood is the epitome of Learn by Doing because you really figure it out as you go.”
A recent McClure family portrait.
The original Cal Poly Magazine story (photographed by current university photographer Joe Johnston) about Maurice McClure, who played football during his time at Cal Poly, details his athletic and academic journey after the death of his father. The couple still have the magazine, framed on the wall of their home office, and plan to tell their kids about the role it played in their parents’ relationship when they’re older.
When Maurice reflects on his experience at Cal Poly, he thinks of the community and relationships he has that were built there — not just with his wife, but his two close friends and former football teammates, Jarred Houston (Recreation Administration ’12) and Darryl Williams (Business Administration ’12), who were also mentioned in the article.
“Seeing that brotherhood and that kinship that was formed at Cal Poly after such a tough start to my football journey after my father passed just shows that through the sport of football, or in life, you can find family in a place you really didn’t think you would,” Maurice said.
“To be able to have the opportunity to go down there and experience such a great place and build that community, those relationships with my friends and then my wife, it’s just a great journey that I feel like the Lord has put me on. And now I’m in this place where we have a house, we have three beautiful kids and the tribe is growing. I can’t complain at all on the ride that I’ve taken so far.”
