Dominic met Jackie on their first day of Japanese class at the University of Rochester in 2013. He remembers she sat at the very front of the room and asked way too many questions for it being only the first day of class. He found out later she arrived to class three hours early "just in case she couldn't find it", which honestly, he found kind of endearing. Jackie has no recollection of meeting Dominic in Japanese class. Jackie remembers meeting Dominic almost 3 months later, when she turned around one day in her political science lecture and asked "hey, aren't you the guy from my Japanese class?" He was, in fact, the guy from her Japanese class. Only a couple months after that, they were dating.

Before Dominic could even pop the question, Jackie found the ring. With the realization that there was no longer a reason to wait, Dominic got down on one knee and proposed on December 21, 2019. Only their beloved pet cat, Basil, can claim to have been witness to this monumental event... and in true Basil fashion, she made it all about her only seconds later by tearing up the carpet.