Sam and Ariel met at Dartmouth College during Freshmen Orientation. Specifically, they met at Hillel on the evening of September 13, 2013 for the start of Yom Kippur. Over the next three and a half years, they became really good friends--spending most Friday nights at Shabbat and Oneg with their fellow '17 Hillel-ites, playing many games of pong (including favorites like Passover Pong and Israeli Independence Day Pong), going on cabin retreats, studying together for Econometrics, serving on the Hillel Board, and supporting each other through the many highs and lows of corporate recruiting. But on the evening of April 28th, 2017, everything changed. Ariel, having drank a few glasses of sangria while celebrating modern love, found herself heavily encouraged by Rachel Montana and Rebecca Asoulin to ask Sam to the "flash tats and snapbacks" themed semi-formal the next evening. Ariel received an impressively quick response back from Sam indicating that he would love to join. The next evening, Sam and Ariel played pong at Sam's fraternity, danced with friends during the semi, and spent the rest of the evening talking and laughing (and playing more pong). Surprisingly, it was the most one-on-one time they'd ever spent together, but it was so easy and so fun. So they decided to keep hanging out for the rest of senior spring. Sadly, on the Friday morning before graduation, they decided to go separate ways, knowing Sam was moving to Boston, Ariel was moving to NYC, and they had only been together for seven short weeks.

Immediately following graduation, Ariel found herself on a yacht, off the Amalfi Coast of Italy, on a 10-day, all-expenses-paid trip. On June 19, 2017, Ariel and two friends decided to take the yacht owner's Cigarette boat out for a ride down the Amalfi Coast. About 20 minutes into the excursion, however, the Cigarette started smoking. The captain turned off the engine and tried to determine the cause or source of the smoke, but instead she was met with a huge face full of smoke. After a few minutes of trying not to panic, Ariel and her two friends decided to jump overboard, in fear of the boat exploding. Eventually, they were rescued by an Italian fisherman right before the boat went up in flames. During this whole debacle, Ariel found herself thinking of Sam. She realized that if she was thinking of him in this kind of a situation, it had to mean something. So when she was back to safety, Ariel texted Sam to let him know what had happened and that she had thought of him. Apparently, Sam was having similar feelings (though born out of a much less dramatic experience) halfway across the world, on a beach in Hawaii. On June 28, 2017, when Sam and Ariel both returned to the the U.S., they made a pro-con list, like the true Econ majors they are, about getting back together. And obviously, they decided to go for it.

Sam and Ariel spent the next two years riding the Amtrak Northeast Corridor, managing long-distance between New York and Boston. They discovered favorite restaurants, bars, museums, and parks in both cities, spent many hours on FaceTime when they were apart, introduced each other to their respective families, traveled to New Hampshire, Montreal, and Jamaica, and endured 4 LSATs. On August 24, 2019, after much debate as to which mattress to keep, Ariel helped Sam move from Boston to NYC in a mere rental car. They both swore to only hire movers going forward, and they kept Ariel's mattress. On October 1, 2019, Ariel and Sam moved into their first joint apartment on the Upper East Side. They learned the joys of furniture shopping (i.e. sitting on hundreds of couches to find the right one), how to live together, and how to work from opposite sides of the kitchen table in the midst of a pandemic. Sam even attended his first semester of law school from their small bedroom in Normandie Court. In January of 2021, they moved to Austin (sight unseen for Ariel) for Sam to attend law school at UT Austin in person. They learned their favorite walk and bike trails, ate a ton of amazing food, survived a catalytic converter theft, discovered the best cocktail bars and speakeasies, drank a lot of wine in Hill Country, and made some new friends for life.

On June 19, 2022, at their 5 year college reunion back at Dartmouth, and exactly 5 years after the boat fire incident, Sam proposed to Ariel on Occom Pond, just down the road from Hillel, where it all started. Sam managed to keep the proposal a secret from Ariel even though so many people at the reunion were aware of the impending proposal (and some people even congratulated Ariel before it happened; Ariel realized thereafter that she is beyond gullible). After an intimate proposal, Ariel and Sam went back to Hillel where all their friends were waiting to celebrate with them. It was truly one of the best days of their lives. Ariel and Sam are so excited to celebrate their love with you!