Ben and Abby met each other on Bumble in October 2019. To those who aren't familiar, it's a dating app. They seemed to have a good connection and Abby soon asked Ben for drinks. Ben was impressed by her initiative and picked a date spot for them to meet for a drink. The two met for drinks at District Tap Downtown. We'll never forget that night. We spent 4 hours talking and getting to know each other. We didn't realize how long we had been there until we could tell they were trying to close down the section. We soon scheduled a second date at Maialina and, after that dinner, we knew we had something special. We continued to date and our relationship grew into love. This was quickly tested by COVID-19. Abby was a nurse in the ICU and was seeing the worst of the pandemic. Ben helped keep Abby sane during that time. Ben also continued working every day...from Abby's guest room. We still managed to take weekend trips and carve out time for each other. We had date nights in the backyard and met our friends over Zoom. While this may seem like a tough way to start a relationship, it showed us that we can get through anything, as long as we face it together.

We had talked about looking at engagement rings for months and finally looked in February '23. Once Ben secured the ring, he very "slyly" asked Abby to go away for the weekend in Brown County. Abby was onboard, suspicious that an engagement was coming. On the day of the engagement, Ben and Abby packed up the car and rode to Story, IN...in silence. While we both knew we were ready for the next step, it didn't diminish the magnitude of the situation. We got ready for dinner and Abby was ready first (shocking for anyone who knows Abby) and when she was getting her purse together, Ben said "Hey Abby!" and she looked over, thinking something was wrong. Ben came over to her and said he didn't want to wait anymore. He got on one knee and Abby said yes. We went to an amazing dinner at Story Inn where we had the whole place to ourselves. It was magical. We stayed in our love bubble, only telling a few friends and family before letting the rest of the world know we had gotten engaged. We'll remember that weekend forever and we'll always have Story, IN.