This study explored prospective elementary teachers' perspectives on real-life connections in the case of story problems. A series of tasks were designed to uncover the participants' collective perceptions of real-life connections by speculating on participants' emerging beliefs about real-life connections and how their beliefs were reflected in the story problems they posed or evaluated. Findings revealed the following ideas: (a) there were overly positive beliefs with insufficient specifics; (b) participants perceived utility and reality as critical components of real-life connections; and (c) there were vast discrepancies between their beliefs and the way they posed or evaluated story problems for real-life connections. These results will generate further discussions about the issues and challenges teacher education programs face, while providing suggestions for future research.