Back on a very snowy Friday evening in January 2018, I went to Johnny's Little Bar in Cleveland with some friends. While we were there, one of my friends who had gone to Dayton saw his fifth year accounting friend Ben at the table on the other side of the bar, so he called him and his friend over to sit by us. The whole night went by at Johnny's Little Bar, then at Dive Bar, and a past-midnight second dinner at Jimmy Johns that I thought this guy in his grey hoodie, jean jacket, and combat boots was so, so cute, but we all parted ways and I figured I wouldn't see him again. Fast forward six months later, after my friends had forced me onto a dating app, I connected with this cute guy who used the cheesiest pick-up line that I had ever heard. My friends insisted that it was cute (I didn't think so), and told me to keep the conversation going. We talked for a while and set up a date for when he got back from vacation. The night before our first date was supposed to take place, he texted me and told me he had gotten back to his apartment early, and I was out in the Flats celebrating a friend's birthday, so I told him to meet us out at Costal Taco. While we were out, we ran into another friend of mine, the one I had been with at Johnny's Little Bar that night in January. He pushed past me to hug this guy I had met on Hinge. It wasn't until that moment that we realized we had met all those months before, and it had taken a dating app to re-connect me with this cute guy who is now my fiancé. Three and a half years later, after creating a life together in Denver, Ben proposed to me with a plate of cookies he made using my classic sugar cookie and royal icing recipe - one of which was a dating app logo and another that was Costal Taco. I can't wait to marry my best friend and shake my head at his cheesy jokes and pick-up lines for the rest of our lives.

In January 2018 I moved into my first apartment during a massive blizzard. My roommate Mike and I knew there wouldn't be many people out, but figured we could go to Johnny's little bar and see where the night took us. While eating one of their famous burgers, I looked across the table and saw a friend from the University of Dayton sitting not too far away. With him was a girl that I did not recognize, but I jokingly thought "good for him, he's really punching above his weight class." I went over, said hello, and they asked my roommate and I if we wanted to go to Dive Bar. We obliged, and honestly the rest is a little too blurry to remember. Kailey says I was being obnoxious and trying to get the attention of some girls who were not wearing enough clothes for a blizzard. I plead the fifth. Waking up the next morning, I remember regretting that I did not get the number of the cute girl I had hung out with the night before. Oh well, time for some PUBG with the boys. Half a year later, I had just matched with a cute girl on Hinge. I was just about to leave for the Adirondacks, but figured I would send out one of my amazing pickup lines. While I did not write it myself, I do fancy myself quite the Google curator. We ended up hitting it off via text (shocking in retrospect) and I came back to Cleveland quite excited to meet this girl. We met out a local bar in the flats, where I discovered she was rooming with a girl from the University of Dayton. We went out to another bar and ran into the same friend from the blizzard back in January. That's when the pieces start to fall into place that we had met before. After that night we went on a couple dates, until she finally invited me to her place where I met the love of my life, Peanut. I'm very excited to start this new chapter of life with the two ladies who mean the most to me.