Our love story began at Appalachian State University in 1994. We were college sweethearts and although we loved and cared for one another, the timing was not right for our relationship to progress. We remained friends for quite some time, but eventually faded away from one another’s lives. Fast forward to August 19, 2024…although we had been Facebook “friends” for years, I took a leap and slid into his DMs on Messenger that day. Turns out that I was the only one…he didn’t even have Messenger at that time! Once he got to my message and we started communicating, the decades apart quickly faded away. We immediately felt a strong connection to one another. It did not take us long at all to figure out that we belonged together again. Due to our schedules and work/training obligations that took Chris out of the area for over a month, it took us a while to plan our first date of “Chris & Kelly 2.0”. Until then, we had many long, late night conversations that connected our hearts in an unbreakable bond. Our first date of “2.0” finally took place on November 16, 2024 at Root & Vine in Morganton followed by a trip to my cabin in the NC mountains. It was a magical weekend, but I knew before I had even laid eyes on him again that he was my person. And he knew that we would spend the rest of our lives together.