A show I loved as a kid was Swamp Fox, about South Carolinian Francis Marion, a Revolutionary War hero; I just discovered it starred Leslie Nielsen & lasted only 1 season (1959). So practically the only state I had an interest in (besides my own, neighboring Minnesota, & California, where Grandma lived) was South Carolina. When I met Steve, it seemed impossibly glamorous that he was from the same state as the Swamp Fox.
But I didn't have a real idea of SC, or pretty much anywhere, till I was much older. Steve did, because he was a weather buff & studied the states & what lay above them. Early on, he said, he could draw a map of the U.S. I knew where the states were, because I liked information & lists, but none of that was real to me because I don't remember reading anything my whole childhood that was informative. I read Chesterton's Father Brown mysteries & learned what evil lurks in the hearts of men; and along with everyone in my family, I read The Education of H*Y*M*A*N K*A*P*L*A*N, Cheaper by the Dozen, plus kids books and lots of Dickens & Stevenson. Maybe I needed to see it to believe it. I was a girl who hadn't seen the ocean or a city.