As anyone with their own experience would tell you, for one reason or another, dating apps suck. Neither of us could imagine meeting someone so genuine and amazing this way, but there we were on Christmas Eve messaging each other for the first time. After a week of wholesome conversations and awfully awkward flirting on my end, we had a date set to meet in person - the Van Buren Drive-In on New Year's Eve in 2019. Being the shy goof that I am, Veronica definitely had to carry the conversation for a while. At one point she even said "you can help, you know," as she set up the back of the car with pillows and blankets (I promise, I wasn't trying to be mean. It was said with an exasperated tone! -Vee). Luckily, she saw the potential and agreed to a second date with me! It was during that second date, as we ate our Monty's Burgers, that we really opened up to each other and we talked for hours. We did literally anything we could to keep the date from ending - went to an arcade, walked to a coffee shop, browsed a book store, drove around the city. While I had been ENAMORED by her since the first date, Veronica got home from our second date and told her mom "you don't understand, this is the man I could marry." I asked her to be my girlfriend within three weeks and two weeks later I was already confessing my love to her! She technically would have said it first while we were at Disneyland the week before, but she pivoted halfway through "I lo-iiIIKEE YOU! I LIKE YOU A LOT!" (A child with a bubble gun had walked by and Cody tried to eat the bubbles. It was so goofy and just so him, I couldn't help but almost tell him how much I loved him. He then teased me and I cried -Vee). We unfortunately had to deal with balancing and growing a new relationship during the onset of the covid-19 pandemic, but I feel like it brought a degree of seriousness to the table and solidified our feelings that we were in this together. Not just through the pandemic, but the rest of our lives together. The love and support our relationship has received from each other's friends and family from the beginning has affirmed what we each already knew - we both surround ourselves with amazing and loving people that have our best interests at heart. It is no surprise we were able to find a partner equally as wonderful. Thank you all for being a part of the journey and we can not wait to celebrate with you on the 5th anniversary of when we first met! Cody