T + K

It was winter. It was cold and New Years and there it was: Hinge. The dating app “designed to be deleted” (great tagline by the way). Long story short: we matched. We laughed. Kevin made a joke about fax numbers. I had a good feeling. I proposed an in person date. We were wary of meeting a stranger on the Internet (thanks, Mom) but we ended up meeting up anyway (sorry, Mom). Unfortunately, I canceled a few first dates. I was TERRIFIED that Kevin would give up. The first one was due to an error of judgment regarding the amount of time I had before grades were due (the first few years of teaching are a bit brutal). The second was because my crown from a root canal went WOOSH and popped right off, firmly lodging itself to the Twizzler I was eating. I’m sure that probably traumatized a few students while I casually joked about putting my tooth back in. Finally, we met. The place we arrived at, Breakfast Republic, was poppin’ more than my tooth did out of my mouth, so we walked around and over shared. We ended up at Young Hickory (which is now a different place, unfortunately). I’d planned to go somewhere after in case it didn’t go well—and told people about it in case Kevin was murdery. The thing was: I didn’t want to leave. We had serious conversations. We laughed. My cheeks hurt. The day was gorgeous. Then the real magic happened. I knew something special was there when Kevin brought up the origins of women changing their last name in marriage and how it was related to women being seen as property. Boiled down, it should all be about choice. Swoon! Fast forward and I asked Kevin if he was … my… boyfriend. CHECK! I’ll let Kevin tell the rest. Our relationship flourished into 2020, the year that nothing eventful happened whatsoever. We decided to move in together, almost entirely because we wanted a place that would let us have a dog. That’s when we added Kylie to the family! We learned our different dog-parenting styles and really grew together, working from our apartment with our new puppy. Before long, Kylie became a big sister when we added Rain to the mix. Now that we’ve moved into my childhood home, we have a house to call our own and plenty of yard space for our dogs to roam. The pandemic posed so many challenges for a new couple, but we took them in stride and came out even stronger than ever before. It only took a little while for me to know I wanted to marry Toni, and now that the stars have aligned it’s finally happening! All because we happened to be on Hinge at the same time.