It was an unseasonable warm day in January. I (Jeff) was working for Aramark and my boss and I was putting out signs for meal plans. All of a sudden, I see this beautiful chocolate woman running towards us. We both look up and say “WHO IS THAT?!?” As she gets closer, I recognize the face and realize it was Hope. At that time, Hope and I were in Generation of Praise {MTSU’s Gospel Choir} together, but we really hadn't had much contact; however at the moment, when she ran by, I said to myself “That’s My Wife. She’s Gon Be My Wife”. By that next month, we had exchanged numbers, and we started towards the path of a relationship.

So on May 15, 2011, Hope and I became a couple officially *the first time around*. The next month, I {Jeff} moved away to Oxford, thus beginning a long distance relationship. We were so happy and elated, and for the most part we had a beautiful relationship. Then we hit a rough patch, and unfortunalely we didn’t make it past it. We broke up on MLK Day, 2013. From that point on, to make an extremely long story short, we dated others, but nothing ever felt right. No matter how many times we tried to force it, no matter how many times we wanted to give up on each other, we just couldn’t/wouldn’t do it. So in September of 2016, Hope and I met up for a catch up “date” in Memphis during Southern Heritage Classic weekend. It felt really good to see her again, and just be able to laugh and chill like old times. From that day, we continued to stay in contact. I attended her graduation from U of M for her nursing degree, and that started to rekindle the flame even more. Then, on MLK Day 2017, Hope and I said we would give it another try, and just like that...Hope and I were together again. 4 Years Later.

Last fall Jeff asked if I wanted to do a couple’s photo shoot, and I agreed. I really didn’t think anything of it because that’s a typical “Jeff thing” to do. It’s nothing for him to surprise me and say “Hey let’s get dressed up and go somewhere.”, so I just thought the photo shoot was something along those lines. Little did I know, he was planning from that moment to propose. Fast forward to the BIG day. It was sooooo cold! The only thing on my mind was where we were going to go eat after this photo shoot. I even mentioned food as a top priority to my good friend/makeup artist, when she asked what we had planned for the night. I met back up with Jeff, and he was definitely acting “weird”, looking serious, and drinking a whiskey and coke at 4:00p.m. I thought the kids at his job just gave him a rough day. I kept saying, “Are you sure work was okay today?”. We finally got to the rooftop for our photos and started taking pictures and thats when he told me he didn’t just bring me there for the photos.... Wednesday March 7, 2018 Jeff made me the happiest girl alive by asking me to do do life with him! He asked me to be his wife!