The story begins when Erica became friends with Jimmy's distant cousin (this friend, Laura, is the niece of the lady who married Jimmy's dad's brother, his Aunt Anne) at her first job out of college well over a decade ago. We both moved to Omaha in 2014, with Erica moving in March. Laura had this Aunt Anne, who lives in Omaha, welcome Erica to town and they had dinner. Jimmy moved a couple months later, and Aunt Anne suggested he message Erica for apartment recommendations, which he did. As a result of this good recommendation, we lived within a mile of each other for over a year before we actually met. After formally meeting at a funeral, we saw each other a week later (in late 2015) at the airport on our ways home for the holidays and shared a nice conversation where we agreed we should hang out when we were both home again (not romantically, as we were seeing other people at the time). In January 2017, Erica finally messaged Jimmy something like "every time I'm in this airport I think about how I'm supposed to call you!" We finally got a coffee together and became fast friends. Jimmy had started dating again at the time, but his sister noticed how, when describing some of his dates, he sounded happiest when talking about his new friend, Erica. After a few months of hanging out as friends (Jimmy getting to know Erica's crew), one night we both happened to notice a particular spark between us and we took the plunge. We very quickly fell deeply in love and had, as Erica says, a "La La Land" summer (it's her favorite movie!) and became inseparable.