Alex and Jessica first laid eyes on each other their freshman year of college at Ball State University in Muncie, Indiana. During the spring semester, Alex and Jessica would see each other each week on Wednesday due to their EDHI 100 class. Jessica was secretly crushing on Alex from a distance and hoped that one day they would hang out. However, Alex and Jessica never got the chance to talk to each other in class or outside of class for awhile. Then on April 12, 2014, Alex sent a friend request to Jessica on Facebook. Jessica remembers that her parents and sister were visiting that day and that she received the request while they were out to lunch. Jessica was as giddy as a schoolgirl! After Jessica accepted the friend request, the couple began having a conversation over Facebook and eventually traded phone numbers to continue the conversation. After a bit of talking, Alex and Jessica decided on having lunch at the Atrium where they could get to know each other more over Chick-fil-A -- their first official date! Alex and Jessica got along perfectly, and their crushes on each other continued to amplify. However, with Alex heading back to Illinois and Jessica to Ohio for summer break, no "official" relationship status came about. Over the summer, Alex and Jessica continued to text on and off, and once they got back to school they would continue to go on dates. This pattern would continue heading into senior year due to being separated by a state over the summer. Then, on February 11, 2017, Alex knew it was then or never to officially ask Jessica to be his girlfriend since they were going to be graduating in three months, and of course Jessica said FINALLY!

The weeks leading up to the proposal were nothing out of the ordinary. The weather was warming up in Cincinnati, so Alex and Jessica were taking their dogs, Cortez and Archie, to various parks in the Cincinnati area. The week before the proposal, Alex asked Jessica if they could take the dogs on a walk through Devou Park, a park in Nothern Kentucky that overlooks the Cincinnati skyline (since he knew how much Jessica loves views of skylines). On the Sunday morning the couple planned to take the dogs on a walk in the park, Archie was sick, and Jessica didn’t know if Archie would be up for the walk. However, Alex was determined to go through with his plan even if it meant carrying Archie through the park. Thankfully, Archie started feeling better, and the couple decided to go to the park. When Alex, Jessica, and the dogs got to the park, they went to the Devou Overlook which is an area of the park that has a clear view of the skyline. The couple sat and talked for a bit, and Jessica was starting to wonder when they would start walking when Alex said he had to call his parents back real quick. That’s when Jessica knew something was up and saw that her parents were present, as well. Jessica knew then that the proposal was happening and instantly started crying tears of joy. Alex then got down on one knee and popped the question, and of course Jessica said YES! What a perfect proposal: to have both dogs and both sets of parents present!