We met our freshman year of high school, but didn’t spend much time together until our senior year Economics class. It’s our freshman year of college that our story really begins.

Freshman year of college brings a lot of change and sometimes you need a little bit of what you already know. When the first sorority date nights came around, Caroline asked Sam and Tommy Adams (Best Man) to be her dates. (Tommy still teases Sam that he got the first date night and Sam got the second.) Sam and Tommy often stopped by the Malone family tailgate on Saturdays in Athens. (Note: they attended the tailgates, but they rarely volunteered to help Caroline set up the tailgate at 7am…) We became great friends that year with weekly dinners at our favorite dining hall, Snelling. We were both dating other people at the time, so we truly were just friends. Fast forward two and a half years with more dinners, game days, and date nights and we both found ourself single and thinking our relationship could possibly be more. Sam finally got up the courage to ask Caroline out (thanks for the encouragement Tommy!). We went on our first, unofficial date to the Delta Sig formal in New Orleans our junior year in 2016 and followed it with the Theta formal in Athens a few weeks later. On February 2, 2016, we decided to make things official and have been together ever since. Together, we’ve experienced college graduation, lots of Georgia football, the ups and downs of PT school, and becoming real adults. We’ve loved all of our adventures together and now we’re ready for the next big one.

COVID threw off a lot of things in our lives, including Caroline’s PT school graduation, big travel plans, and unbeknowst to Caroline, Sam’s proposal. As things started to improve and vaccines became available, Sam (with the help of Katy and Chris) came up with a new plan to pop the question on a hiking trip out west. As was typical for COVID times, things didn’t go quite to plan. We were supposed to be on a 9pm flight from Atlanta to Las Vegas, but our plane was hit by lightning. Instead, we spent a night in the airport and left the next morning at 8am. Katy and Chris were already in Las Vegas, working to revise the plan so the proposal could still happen that night. They picked us up at the airport and took us back to their hotel room for a quick shower before hitting the road for the day. We had a six hour drive to the North Rim of the Grand Canyon ahead of us and we were starting later than planned. Katy did her best to make up time from the drivers seat, while Chris and Sam texed about possible back up plans. Caroline slept most of the drive and was blissfully unaware of all of this. When we finally arrived for our evening “hike” just before sunset, Chris set off to find the perfect, quiet proposal spot without Caroline noticing. We ate our dinner watching the sunset and decided to take some pictures. We took a few pictures together when Katy instructed Sam to “do something interesting.” Sam turned to Caroline, got down on one knee, and pulled out an engagement ring. After some very sweet words, Sam asked Caroline to marry him and she said yes! Katy and Chris had planned a little celebration for us post proposal and we called our parents to share the good news. Thanks for answering those late night phone calls Moms and Dads. It was a crazy ending to our crazy day. We enjoyed celebrating this next chapter much more rested over the next few days with hikes at Bryce Canyon and Zion National Parks.