We grew up REALLY close to each other… It's only an 8-mile drive between our childhood homes, but we knew very little about each other until late in our high school years. Abby had a pretty tightly-knit group of about 15 Tri-Valley High School friends who hung out together all the time. Even though Dan was a “West Central traitor" living in Mustang territory, he had neighbor & church-friend connections to the group and was lucky enough to be invited to join their shenanigans regularly.

The first time we remember really talking to each other was in high school at a party with the group of Tri-Valley friends at Carl Johnson's house. Abby remembers that Dan was making friends laugh by playing the piano and singing a silly song from the movie The Hangover. We were only acquaintances at the time, and soon headed our separate ways off to college. We met up again during spring break of 2012 when the group of a dozen Tri-Valley friends (plus Dan) took a trip to the Black Hills to party. In hindsight, a couple brief conversations on this trip likely marked the beginning of our friendship.

The next summer in August 2013, Dan sent messages to his South Dakota State University Jackrabbit friends (including Abby) to let them know that he would be transferring to Brookings and that he was looking forward to seeing them. He told Abby that they should catch up sometime once school had started. For the first few weeks of the fall 2013 semester, our friendship consisted of Facebook messages, Snapchats, and texts about the Statistics course we were both taking from different professors. At some point, Dan asked Abby for help on Stats homework and Abby volunteered to come over to their house to work on assignments together. A few homework sessions on the living room couch at Dan’s college house led to Dan asking Abby out on a first date making it an “official thing” on November 1, 2013… The next five and a half years flew by!