One August day in 2022, Cole began a new job at the same school where Jenny was a Literacy Coach. While neither of us clearly remembers the actual day we met, it wasn’t long before we began to notice each other. One of our first memories together was when the power went out at work and Jenny had to cover for the teacher next door to Cole’s classroom. At this point, Jenny had already developed a crush on Cole, but it was this day that Cole noticed something different in Jenny and wanted to get to know her more. It wasn’t until December that we actually exchanged numbers. Jenny was leading a literacy night at school and gave her number to everyone in case they needed her. Later that night, she received a text from Cole congratulating and thanking her for a job well done at literacy night. While we occasionally texted, Cole thought there was no way Jenny was interested because of her bad texting habits. Little did he know, she was just trying to keep it professional just in case he didn’t feel the same way. Cole began coming to Jenny’s office at the same time every day in the hopes of having a quick conversation before the school day started and began requesting meetings to help “learn how to incorporate literacy into his classroom”. Jenny was still clueless and just gave him textbooks to hopefully help. We began talking more during these meetings, specifically about books. Cole thought it was weird that Jenny likes sad books and Jenny gave Cole book recommendations on books she was currently reading. Eventually, these school-related meetings became “meetings” and our own little book club. Eventually, one of our co-workers noticed that we both had crushes on each other and decided to speak her mind and set us up. On February 15th at 8:30 pm (while she was already asleep) Jenny got a text from this co-worker that said, “OMG, why are you such an old lady? Heads up…Cole is going to ask you on a date tomorrow!”. Of course, Jenny woke up at 1 am, saw this text, and could not sleep the rest of the night. As luck would have it, the power went out at school the next morning, school was canceled and Cole never got his chance to ask Jenny on the date. The next day, Cole’s birthday, Jenny left work early because she was sick. She was really not making this situation easy for Cole. Later that night, she received a text from Cole asking her on a date. One week later, we had our first date at Cox Arboretum which lasted 6 hours. We had matching sunburns walking into school two days later and the rest is history.

On Oct. 15th, 2023, after going to Mass together, Cole took Jenny on a picnic at Cox Arboretum where they had their first date, and many dates since. Jenny had a pretty strong feeling today was going to be the day, even though Cole had tried his best to throw her off when he was actually going to propose. While walking around after our picnic, Cole led us to the same bench where we sat on our first date. After talking for quite a while Cole got down on one knee and asked Jenny to marry him. Of course, she said “YES!” and we sat on the bench crying all of the happy tears excited to start our lives together. We're so excited to celebrate this next chapter in our lives with you. See you in Dayton!