Ben and Aly met at Stage Crafters Community Theatre back in 2016. Aly was assisting with set construction, and Ben was one of those actor types. They got along well and friendly with each other, but Aly became a foster mom soon after that, and they kind of drifted apart for a while. Fast forward a few years. Ben and Aly each have their own families and begin to reconnect as parent friends. You know the kind… “Hey, my child is doing this…any suggestions for how to handle that?” “We should try to hang out. I think our kids would have fun together at [insert local family event here] and it would be great to catch up in person!” But the timing never worked out to spend time together in person. As the short-distance friendship grew, Ben and Aly both realized that they might have had feelings for each other…just in time for Ben to move to Georgia and make it a LONG-distance friendship. But still, the connection grew stronger and stronger, and the conversations grew longer and longer, sometimes resulting in phone calls lasting until 3 or 4 am…on work nights. Finally, Ben decided that the move to Georgia was ultimately the wrong place for his family to be, so he moved them back to Fort Walton. By this point, both Ben and Aly had voiced their potential interest to each other, but neither one was really willing to jeopardize their friendship. One evening, they finally were able to meet up for dinner, and while neither one knew exactly what the dinner was going to be at the onset, it was VERY clear to both of them by the end of the dinner, that what they were on was, in fact, a date. Neither one wanted the date to end, so they ended up going back to Ben’s house (a very rare occurrence for Aly on a first date) where she proceeded to trounce him at board games (a very rare occurrence for Ben EVER). From that point forward, they were smitten!