After meeting through mutual friends, Chelsea recalls stating that Ryan was the cutest boy she had ever seen in real life. Ryan was immediately taken with Chelsea’s “cutie pie eyes”. A friendship grew and the pair bonded over a DJ group called Galantis. A long distance relationship formed while Chelsea finished out Physical Therapy school in Arlington and Ryan was working in Virginia Beach. After graduating with her doctorate in the spring of 2017, Chelsea moved to Virginia Beach. In the Summer of 2018 Ryan and Chelsea built their home together near the Virginia Beach Oceanfront and ViBe District. In January of 2019, they adopted their dog, Laney from Critter Cavalry Rescue out of Nashville. In March of 2020 the two got engaged!

When Ryan first moved to Virginia Beach he loved taking out of town friends to Munden Point Park to play disc golf on the water. If you go at the right time you can watch the sunset over the sound. He had always talked about taking Chelsea & Laney there, but had never pulled the trigger on making the 40-minute drive. Ryan and Chelsea had gotten into the habit of taking Laney on walks a couple Fridays in a row, so after exhausting our usual nature walk spots, it made perfect sense to suggest Munden Point on March 20th 2020. Ryan had driven down a week earlier to make sure he got the timing of the sunset just right, and so the three loaded up the car late that afternoon and headed down. It was a beautiful day, unusually warm for March, in the upper 70’s. The two of them walked around the entire park, checking out the boat landing and docks on the sound while tossing the ball to Laney to tire her out. When the sun was hanging low over the sound they settled onto a bench right by the water and that’s when Ryan got down on one knee and proposed! Chelsea said yes and the rest is history.