Carter and Kaitlyn met on May 7th, 2021 at Guthrie Green in Tulsa, OK. Carter was driving from California to Illinois and needed a break from the long drive; Tulsa was the next closest city on his map. Kaitlyn, a student at the University of Tulsa, was out with friends enjoying the city’s annual “Mayfest.” As Carter pulled into his downtown hotel, he noticed the festival and decided to take a walk around town. He walked past the Tulsa Drillers stadium, explored the street vendors, and made his way through the crowd until he reached Guthrie Green, where a free concert was taking place. While sitting on the stairs at the venue, a fight broke out among a group of college-aged boys right in front of him. Initially, he didn’t think much of it, but when the police intervened, one of the arrested boys shouted, “209! Stockton baby! You don’t know where I’m from!” Surprised, since he had gone to college in Stockton, CA, Carter approached the other group involved and asked if he had heard correctly. As they chatted, a girl stepped forward, pushed one of the boys aside, and extended her hand. “Hey, I’m Kaitlyn,” she introduced herself. As Carter and Kaitlyn talked, she asked what brought him to Tulsa. To her surprise, he mentioned he was heading to a small town just ten minutes from her hometown of Collinsville, IL. They exchanged numbers and parted ways, not seeing each other again for just over two months until their first date after one of Carter’s games. During the summer of ‘21, they got to know each other better, FaceTiming every day while Kaitlyn returned for her senior year and Carter went home for the off-season. When the ‘22 season started, Carter was back on the road to Illinois, but this time with a planned trip to Tulsa. Almost a year to the day they first met, he showed up unannounced at Kaitlyn’s apartment with purple flowers and asked her to be his girlfriend. Fast forward to May 3rd, 2024: they flew to Tulsa from their home in Nashville, TN, and returned to Guthrie Green, where it all began. With the help of her friends who were there the first night they met, Carter got down on one knee and asked Kaitlyn if she would be willing to change her last name to Hayes.