It's a modern day romance for the ages. A tale almost as old as time. We were both using Bumble, a dating app, when we both swiped right on each other. Rachel recognized Patrick in one of the pictures on Matt's profile as she had been to Board & Brush before. Some chatting and exchanging messages led to exchanging phone numbers. We texted back and forth for several days. Then came the time to ask Rachel out and Matt asked her out for an upcoming Saturday. Matt didn't think the first date would happen because Rachel mentioned she was leaving for a trip on Saturday morning. But Rachel suggested meeting up on Friday night instead, so we decided to meet up for drinks.

For our first date, we went for drinks at the popular arcade bar Up-Down in Kansas City. Before meeting up for the first date, Matt talked smack, as he tends to do, about how good he was at skee ball since Rachel said she liked the game. Rachel mentioned she was going to "bring it" at skee ball and he mentioned he was going to bring a tissue "for her tears" just in case she was a poor sport and cried after losing. Besides skee ball, we played other arcades games and connect four. Rachel can tell you who won (or allowed her to win) in connect four on this particular night. We then ended up just sitting on the patio, having drinks, and talking until 2:00 AM, but it felt like we only spent an hour or two together. Rachel then had to be at the airport at 4:00 AM to go on vacation. We continued to talk throughout her vacation and Matt's vacation a few days later before finally being in the same state again and going out for a second time.

Matt planned out asking her to marry him for a few weeks. He got the permissions from her family ahead of time. Then he planted a seed in her head to go out for drinks at Up-Down an entire week prior to when he wanted to ask her, so as not to make her suspicious. The week of the big event, she mentioned a few days before that she didn't want to go out on the weekend and just stay in. Matt persisted and persuaded her that they should still go out to enjoy some rare free time they would get in the next month. She relented and they headed out after she got home from work. Unbeknownst to her, Matt hid the ring in a small ring box in a front coat pocket. Matt thought she may have felt the ring box when she leaned in and hugged him earlier when they were on the streetcar, but she didn't. We then headed to Up-Down to recreate our first date. We played skee ball (Matt won) and he gave Rachel another "For Your Tears" note on a napkin (just like on our first date), that Rachel promptly mockingly laughed at and crumbled up to toss in her purse. Matt then suggested a little later that we both go and check out the Mayor's Christmas Tree that would be lighting in a few days before all the crowds showed up. We then headed down to Union Station. When we got to Union Station, we headed up to the Liberty Memorial to take in the view of the city. Matt suggested they take some selfies to capture the night. We then walked down from the top of the memorial to the side landing and steps near the base of the memorial. Matt decided to take another selfie with Rachel. After snapping a selfie, Matt pressed play on a Youtube video he had already loaded to try to play the song "I Prayed For You" by Matt Snell, but an add played instead. Matt fumbled around to try to get the song to play, skipped to another song, ended up getting it back to playing the correct song, but by then Rachel knew what was coming. Matt then got on one knee and asked her to marry him and she said yes.