Hannah and Garret met while they were both living in New York City! Hannah had been working at Penguin Random House—a Mid-Wetern girl who resigned herself to Big City life before her work offered remote options. And Garret was working on finishing his dissertation for his PhD in Russian History at Fordham—a middle-of-nowhere Texas boy in the big city. They ran into each other at a bookstore in January of 2020, exchanged numbers, and got to chatting. Two weeks later, Hannah asked Garret out for lunch and they spent four hours talking in a booth at Harlem Shake about halfway between where they were each living. Over the next few weeks, they went out every weekend doing movie nights and bookstore dates and bakery crawls, and on Valentine's Day Garret asked Hannah to be his girlfriend officially. A month later COVID hit. Between the city-wide panic at an unseen virus with the potential to murder you in your sleep and turn all your toes blue (this was back when that was a "symptom"), Garret asked if Hannah wanted to stay with him for a bit until they knew what was going on, so she packed a bag and she and her pup Moose and took a cab to the Bronx. She never left 😅. Her lease was up that May and they decided if they could survive COVID, they'd get through anything together, so Hannah moved in. In 2021 they moved back to Ohio where Garret could finish his dissertation in peace, and he graduated in the spring of 2022 before taking a visiting professorship at St. Mary's. So Hannah and Garret moved to Indiana for the year, and then Garret got a year long visiting position at Kenyon College back in Ohio so in 2024 it was back to Hannah's home state for the year. In November of 2024, Garret took Hannah out for a day downtown to the botanical gardens (one of her favorite places) and popped the question! (She had no idea he'd hired a stealthy photographer and everything!) She, obviously, said "yes!" Where will 2025 take them? No one knows! But they’re excited to find out.