Note to our future children: whatever the most popular dating app is in 2050, delete it from your phone (or the computer chip in your brain) right away. However, if a good friend tells you to come to the bar because there is “someone you have to meet,” then jump in the shower, make yourself presentable, and hop in an Uber right away. For it was on a hot, humid July evening in St. Louis that your parents both answered this very request. On the back patio of The Gramophone your father was finishing up the last bits of his Mississippi Nights Club. Little did he know that the somebody he had to meet was a beautiful and brilliant woman from Peru. Sitting across the table from each other your mother liked his look, but thought he was a little too sure of himself. Your father was just amazed that this person was talking to him. Over the next two years there were countless nights in Latin dance clubs and wild days at the wineries. There were adventures to Chicago, New Orleans, New York, and finally to Peru. There was a big move from your father’s Tower Grove bachelor pad to your mother’s St. Louis Hills condo. There was even a global pandemic. It was then, locked down in a two bedroom flat that your father finally worked up the courage to tell his quarantine partner that he wanted to spend the rest of their lives together. Even after the local authorities said it was safe to leave one’s home again. So the moral of the story is listen to your friends. And when you find someone you want to spend the rest of your life with hold on tight and enjoy the journey.