In February of 2020, Ben made a trip from Kansas City to St Louis to visit his youngest sister, Grace, where she was attending college as a junior. He was in town for Mardi Gras, where St Louis has the second biggest celebration in America, and Grace had the day's festivities planned. After a few hours of meeting friends and enjoying the Soulard neighborhood, Grace ran into her friend Maggie by a tree right across the street from Great Grizzly Bear. While Grace and Maggie spent a few minutes chatting, Ben struck up a conversation with her friend Sara about the neat intricacies of the US interstate highway numbering convention. As the conversation continued, Ben learned that not only was Sara from the Kansas City area, just like him, but she was also planning to be in town the next weekend to visit. After numbers were exchanged, a brunch date the next Sunday was planned. As short sentence text turned to paragraphs to phone calls to FaceTimes and a planned weekend visit, we felt a spark and a inherent sense of comfort with each other right as the calendar turned to March of 2020. With 4 hours of I-70 separating us, we had to decide very quickly how seriously we wanted to be. From our decision of "yes", we have never once looked back. We feel so much gratitude to our support systems over the course of our 5.5 year relationship. 910 days were spent on opposite ends of Missouri and starting a long distance at the beginning of a global pandemic isn't a particularly normal way of going about things, but we have felt nothing but deep love from all our family and friends. You are all stories we've told, memories we've made, and wisdom that we've turned to during hard times. When we reflect on how we've been able to reach the point of promising forever to each other, the first thing we think of is how much the people around us have built us up to each other. Thank you will never be enough.