After moving to Baton Rouge in 2018 for work, Jake was at an LSU football tailgate with his friend Riad who was finishing up his last semester at LSU and in the same class as Monica. Knowing that Jake and Monica were both engineers and both ran, Riad thought they would be a perfect fit and his master plan was to get the two of them to meet that day. When Monica and her friends arrived at the tailgate, he told Jake he had someone he wanted him to meet and introduced him to Monica. After introducing the two, and like any good friend, he immediately bailed and let the two awkwardly have their small talk conversation. Very quickly, Jake and Monica realized all of their similarities and the conversation continued. Jake also realized that he had truly met someone special - the most beautiful and fun girl he had ever met who he had so much in common with. As Monica was about to head out to the game, Jake realized his only shot at talking to this girl again was to get her number. So in his best effort, Jake offered to help Monica get a job with his company (as a 1 month employee himself… nice one Jake…) and said he would reach out to her to help out. She gave Jake her number and email and went off to the game. It is common to wait ~2 days to text a girl who’s number you get, but Jake only made it about 6 hours before texting her to “see how the game was”. From that point on, the two talked periodically while Monica finished her last semester of ChemE and wrapped up her final Cross Country season (a frequent topic of discussion). However, given the busy schedule that Monica had and Jake’s fear of messing it up, the conversations got fewer, and slowly faded to none. Time went on, Monica graduated from LSU, Jake stayed busy with work, and Monica eventually headed to Houston for about a year. Jake thought his opportunity was lost.
A little over a year later, on a hot Saturday morning, Jake and his friend Ben (who knew Monica from LSU) were running and noticed Monica running with a friend as well. Ben did not know that Jake & Monica had previously met and also didn’t realize that Monica had moved back to Baton Rouge with her job. After realizing this, Jake’s hope that he actually might be able to have a chance with his dream girl was restored and he insisted that Ben set them back up. 6 months passed (with struggling planning efforts from Ben and Jake on how to reach out) and Jake was growing impatient. At this point, it was December and very close to Riad’s birthdays so on Riad’s birthday, Jake reached out to Riad to say Happy Birthday and also snuck in a “Oh and by the way, how is Monica doing?”. Unknowingly, Monica had texted Riad as well for his birthday and also asked how Jake was doing. Riad played it off cool, and like any great friend, told neither that they had asked about each other. A few days later, Jake finally gave in and grew enough courage to randomly text Monica out of the blue. After a couple of days of texting, he grew even more courage and asked her on a date. On that first date, when Monica survived watching an entire Iowa State bowl game while Jake freaked out at the TV, Jake REALLY realized he had found someone special. After a couple of weeks, Jake asked Monica to be his girlfriend and after a year of being together, Jake asked Monica to marry him on February 12, 2022. #SheTakesTheJake TLDR (from Jake’s perspective) - Monica blew me off for 2 years, but I hung in there and kept my head up. A true underdog story.