Believe it or not, we met online! As you might have guessed, the first conversations were about music and cheese. Our first date was at a speakeasy in the West Village of Manhattan called Little Branch, and before long we were inseparable, managing to see each other nearly every day—despite respectively living in Harlem and on the Jersey Shore! After five months back and forth on trains, Ray happened upon a perfect, cozy little apartment near where he teaches in Red Bank, Alex’s favorite little town on the Shore, and we went for it! And as you might again have guessed, the last few years together here have been full of near-constant laughter and beautiful music and the smell of garlic cooking.

For her birthday last April, Ray surprised Alex with her first trip abroad to Salzburg and Vienna, Austria. Before the trip, Ray secretly drove up to Melrose, Massachusetts and back in a day to seek the blessing of Alex’s parents Larry and Debi and her grandmother Ruth. Debi gave Ray her yellow diamond, which had been passed down from Alex’s great aunt Fran, to her grandmother, then to Debi. Ray also obtained a heirloom diamond passed down from his great-grandmother, and combined the two with a third new stone into one ring. Throughout the first two days in Salzburg, Ray carried it close, waiting for the right moment on the trip to present itself. That moment came in a tiny cable car for two going down a mountain outside Salzburg, overlooking village-lined glacial lakes with the Alps in the distance. Having blissfully affirmed our love and lifelong devotion to each other, we got to spend our first days as fiancés making our pilgrimmage to Mozart’s birthplace, exploring ancient Salzkammergut villages and royal Viennese palaces, walking the vineyards along the Danube, and eating just about everything we could along the way!