Every 29 and a half years or so, Saturn returns to the celestial position it was when you were born. Astrologists say that this, one's "Saturn Return," marks a great shift in one's life. In 2016, Kate was teaching music at a small independent high school in Chicago when the drama teacher left and they asked Kate if she wanted to teach the class the following school year. "Sure," she said, having only done drama camps as a child with no real theatre experience outside the opera. Desperate to learn more about acting, she found Susan Hart and (the late) Jeffrey Carlson's Shakespeare classes through a colleague in her choir at the First United Methodist Church at the Chicago Temple, where she had just become an alto section leader. Around the same time, Erik packed up his 2007 Toyota Corolla with a suitcase, an army cot, and a dream and headed to Chicago to pursue more opportunities in the theatre. Upon the suggestion of his Shakespeare and acting teacher at the University of Tennessee he, too, signed up for a class with Susan and Jeffrey as an introduction to the theatre scene in Chicago. In early 2017, Kate and Erik took the same Monologue 1 class together. And then the Monologue 2 class. And then the Scene Study class. And then the One Play Focus class, and many more One Play Focus classes to come. In December of 2017 Kate and Erik became more than classmates. As Saturn returned to the place he left between 1988 and 1989, Kate and Erik also found a home in Chicago, the incredible community of people they have had the great fortune of meeting and creating with along the way, and in each other.

Once Susan caught on that we were dating, she started to give us some of Shakespeare's greatest love scenes to perform in class. The very first scene she gave us is known as the "sun and moon" scene from The Taming of the Shrew (Act 4 Scene 5). In the scene, Kate finally understands what Petruchio is trying to accomplish in his own imperfect way... Now, there is a lot of nuance and a lot of ways these words can be interpreted, but we choose to believe that in this moment, these two people relax into becoming true partners. It also happens that The Taming of the Shrew is the play we saw at the Royal Shakespeare Company when we visited Stratford together. The sun and the moon hold great significance in many of Shakespeare's plays and sonnets, and to us it also symbolizes balance and teamwork. That's why Kate decided to design her engagement ring with two colored diamonds on either side of a clear diamond: the yellow circular diamond representing the sun, the blue circular diamond representing the moon and the marquise diamond in the center representing the stars.