Just like a lot of young couples these days, we started talking on a dating app (Tinder, if you’re curious), and quickly hit it off. We made plans to meet up in person for our first date, but that was the day lockdown hit. So instead, we had our first date over Zoom—dinner and a movie. Then another, and another! We had long phone calls during days that we were each home alone, keeping each other afloat for the lengthened lockdown. Finally, we decided to meet in person. We each isolated for a full 16 days beforehand, and Megan went over to Sydney’s place to bake cookies and watch The Princess Bride together. We started officially dating April 27th, 2020.

Megan and Sydney were both in Phoenix for Megan’s doctorate graduation in late August of 2022. Sydney planned to throw a lovely to-do at Top Of The Rock the day afterward, and invited our friends and family. Little did Megan know that Sydney had a secret agenda! She confessed to their friends that she was going to propose after they gifted Megan her diploma frame, and enlisted Justyn Beach to take photos, and Mike Magistro to fly in from Pennsylvania to take the video. Then there would be champagne and pictures against a beautiful desert backdrop on the mountain. Unfortunately, on the morning of…Megan woke up not feeling well. She took a COVID-19 test, and came out of the bathroom with a mask on, saying, “Houston, we have a problem.” She had tested positive for COVID-19. In that moment, Sydney knew her perfect movie-worthy proposal was shattered, and considered postponing, saving such romance for the future, when it could all still go as planned. But then she thought about why she wanted to marry Megan, and all the life that was to come, that life wouldn’t always go perfectly as planned, and that she wanted to have and to hold this woman, for better or for worse, in sickness AND in health. So she went to her suitcase and brought out the ring, one she had set the stones in herself, and got down on one knee. “I had this day all planned out perfectly, the way you deserve, but I promise to love you in both sickness and in health. Will you marry me?” Megan was sobbing so hard she couldn’t speak, but she eventually said yes!