Our love story begins like many before it, on March 29th of 2014 at a gourmet sausage restaurant in Venice, California. Alicia was on her way west to Napa Valley, to enjoy something new for her, wine tasting, and planned a 3 day stop to visit her dear friend Ilana in Los Angeles. Ilana’s boyfriend at the time, Ryan (don’t worry, they’re married now), was heading back to the University of Oregon for grad school in the next few days so a gathering of friends was held in his honor the night of the 29th. Jeb walked into the restaurant and immediately saw Alicia, though nearly scared her off as he made a typical funny face directed towards Ilana. Despite this seemingly poor first impression, Jeb was quite taken aback by this young lady, particularly her stunning smile and shimmering eyes, and made a continual effort to chat with Alicia throughout the dinner. Thankfully, Alicia did not rebuff his attempts at conversation, and the two engaged over deep topics, such as the NFL and why exactly Alicia loved the Kardashians (it’s all about Khloe). As the dinner wore down, Jeb knew he couldn’t let the conversation just end, so he dug down deep for the inner fortitude and seized upon an earlier topic at dinner, music, for his attempt. The question “oh you like hip hop? I’ve got some old school hip hop in my car we can listen to if you’d like me to drive you home”. Amazingly the beautiful young lady agreed to this ever so smooth line, and the two continued the conversation over the duration of Alicia’s time in LA. As the two parted before Alicia’s flight to the Bay Area, Jeb wiped back a tear from her eye and promised they would keep in touch.

And spoiler alert, they DID. After two months of texts and calls, Jeb dug deep again for that trusty fortitude, and booked a flight to Fort Myers to see Alicia. It was then on the second night of the visit, during Father’s Day weekend no less, that Jeb asked Alicia if she would be willing to pursue this relationship officially, and asked her to be his girlfriend. Thankfully she said yes, signifying the birth of Team JA and the start of a 2 year odyssey of long distance dating. Thanks to an unexpected but beyond generous gift of frequent flyer miles, Alicia and Jeb were able to visit one another every few months, well mostly Alicia to California, where their burgeoning love began strengthening over adventures from Claremont to Paso Robles. After 2 years in different time zones, Team JA packed up Jeb’s car and headed southeast, 10 years after Jeb initially moved to California. During the drive across country the bond between these two lovebirds ran deeper, as visits to Denver, Chicago, Kentuckyana, Atlanta and Alicia’s family’s hometown of Dubuque, Iowa all brought a sense of love and joy to the two. Upon arrival in Ft Myers in late July of 2016, the two found themselves free from the burdens of long distance dating, yet stronger for having endured it together. Over the next two years, Jeb and Alicia continued to develop their love for one another and experienced new opportunities to see the world and live life together.

On March 1st, after waiting a few weeks for Alicia’s engagment ring to be designed, Jeb picked it up and set out to Sanibel Island with Alicia under the guise of having a fun date night. Little did Alicia know that her sister Maria and Jeb had been planning this evening for a month now, as Maria went ahead to the beach to plot out a space to hide and take pictures, while Jeb kept the prized possession in a cloth bag in his shoe. No way Alicia wouldn’t have noticed something in his pockets! With a detour to watch the sunset at the beach set up by Alicia (thanks for the easy assist), the two sat down with a picnic basket as much to Jeb’s fear but not surprisingly the beach was PACKED with people watching the sunset (okay there were like 10 people but still!). As Jeb spied Maria hiding conspicuously nearby, he reached into his pocket to take the ring out, only for a woman to walk up behind the two and ask if Jeb and Alicia would like their picture taken. A bit taken a back, Jeb realized that this interloper had seen him take the ring out, and decided instead to improvise, as the woman would be able to take close up pictures of the proposal on Alicia’s phone! Subtlety however was not a strong suit of this woman, as after two pictures, she asked if there were any other poses Jeb and Alicia would like to try. Seeing that this woman was determined to incorporate herself into our story, Jeb took the reigns back, dropped to one knee and got that ring on Alicia’s hand as fast as he could after she thankfully said yes!