Our story is truly one of those magical moments of fate, where being in the right place at the right time altered both of our lives and brought us to where we are today. Well you see, back in 2017 both Alexis and I received the same letter from the city of Brooklyn, New York. The letter instructed us that we had been chosen! Not for each other, but for our civic duty…JURY DUTY. Oh the horror! Needless to say, I (Alex) tried to sneak my way out of serving in any way that I could, postponing for 6 months, but that fateful Friday came and I, along with my future bride, headed to the courthouse to be given our “instructions”. Out of the over 60+ people there split into various courtrooms, we were somehow put in the same group. You wouldn’t think you would become close to 22 strangers over the course of 2 weeks locked in a courtroom, but you’d be wrong. Jury duty is a journey, and for us serving as “grand jurors” brought us to become friends. On the first day I noticed this beautiful girl. Thankfully through our mutual jury duty experiences, we had spoken enough that I had the courage to ask if she wanted to walk across the Brooklyn Bridge together on a beautiful sunny day as we were let out early. She didn’t know, but this was a test on my part as I felt if you can talk to one another comfortably from one end of a bridge to another, surely it’s worth something (that and you can’t just walk away as you’re on a…bridge.) We walked the bridge, talking the whole time, and dipped into a cafe for coffee, where we spent four more hours chatting. That was the beginning of our relationship, nurtured from jury duty, blossomed by the liveliness of the city. A southern boy, and a Brooklyn girl, sounds like the beginning of a beautiful story to me.