If Nancy didn't meet Ned in The Clue in the Diary, how?

The first time Nancy ever meets Ned is in The Clue in the Diary (she thinks he's stealing her car, lol). Apparently, they also snuck him into a one of the Nancy Drew Notebooks, which is just a bit bizarra. Now, the question is, if they hadn't met in either The Clue in the Diary or the Notebook, how would they have met?

Now, they're probably only half a million romanticized scenarios of this, but I'm not going down the road of fan fiction. Quite literally, what are our possibilities? In the original series, Ned was from Mapleton, so he probably wouldn't go to the same school as Nancy. You still have random events, trips, or a case that could have landed them both in Mapleton or River Heights, but now we're on the same path as The Clue in the Diary. They could also have met through friends, such as in a random scenario where Burt Eddleton and George are a couple, and Burt brings Ned as a date for Nancy!

In the Casefiles, they made another attempt to erase The Clue in the Diary, by saying Ned and Nancy had been dating since high school. This might also imply that they went to the same high school though...

In the Girl Detective books, Ned lives in River Heights, which sends yet another twist to the whole high school thing, but leaves the door open for more interaction. This is also alluded to in the 2007 movie Nancy Drew.

Throughout most of the collection, Ned is going to Emerson College, which also gives us options, as Nancy could have visited Emerson for a case.

And, we always have the option of saying they met when they were nine years old, as the Notebooks would have us believe. ^.~ Which just might explain how Nancy knew about Ned in the remastered The Secret at Shadow Ranch, before they 'officially' met in The Clue in the Diary! ;D

Cou