Let’s set the scene. It’s the spring of 2020 — woof. The world has shut down. We’re quarantining on opposite sides of the country, taking endless family walks, binge-watching the first season of Outer Banks, and scrolling aimlessly through the new craze everyone’s talking about: TikTok. With no real hope of meeting anyone during those uncertain days, we both turned to Tinder; mostly to pass the time. And somehow, amid the endless swiping, we matched. We started chatting, laughing, sharing stories, and then… noticed something odd. The little note at the bottom of each other’s profiles said we were 2,000+ miles apart. Huh? As it turned out, Ben had been casually moving his Tinder location around the country — and for one single day, he landed himself in Milwaukee, Wisconsin. Fate? Maybe. We decided to keep talking despite the distance. Message by message, night after night, our connection grew stronger. After nearly a month of talking, one day in May, Ben threw out an idea, half joking, half serious: “What if I came to visit?” I was sure my parents would never go for it, but I asked anyway. And somehow, maybe thanks to the delirium and boredom of quarantine, my mom was the first to say, “Sure, why not?” Soon enough, she was convincing my dad too. Next thing we knew, Ben had booked a flight from San Francisco to Milwaukee and was about to spend five days with me and my family. What could possibly go wrong? Well, spoiler alert, nothing went wrong, and that was, in fact, the beginning of our love story. Fast forward a year. Ben had graduated from Colby College and accepted a job at a wealth management firm in Milwaukee, making the move to Wisconsin, and finally closing the chapter of being a long-distance couple. He spent the next 3.5 years in Wisconsin, and, as it turned out, he made a pretty fabulous Wisconsinite. Then, near the end of 2024, life took us west for a new adventure. A new job opportunity opened up for Ben near his roots in San Francisco, and we decided to take the leap. We packed up our little life: one car full of belongings, two cats (Betty & Alfie), and one big dream, and drove 30 hours across the country to start our next chapter. In April 2025, we celebrated our birthdays with a trip to Carmel-by-the-Sea, one of our favorite places. On a quiet beach, with a bottle of wine and a silly trivia game, Ben proposed. It was the most magical night. Ben had a photographer hiding in the brush behind us to capture the moment, we called all our family and friends to share the news, and drank quite a bit of celebratory champagne! It was the same beach we’d visited once before back in the summer of 2020, when he had joked, “This would be a great place to get engaged someday.” Turns out, he was right.