We technically first met when Kathleen visited UC San Diego's philosophy department as a prospective PhD student and sat in on a course in which John was a student. When Kathleen officially began the program the following fall, we immediately hit it off on an intellectual level. Our first email correspondence was John sending Kathleen a PDF of a philosophy of computing textbook that she expressed a passing interest in one day over coffee; we quickly progressed to enthusing about our dissertation projects to one another over beers, then to sending each other paper drafts for proofreading and feedback. We spent another year becoming close friends.

Over the next couple years, our relationship got even closer but no less dorky. Kathleen first vowed to herself to date John when he mentioned having in his apartment a poster of sentence diagrams of the first lines of famous novels. Meanwhile, when Kathleen mentioned offhand that she could never date a man who didn't appreciate "Pride and Prejudice," John immediately bought the book and then put off reading it for months for fear he wouldn't like it enough. For most of that year we both insisted, to each other and to anyone who would listen, that we were not interested in each other romantically. We are, luckily, both really bad at lying. Things came to a head in the summer of 2016, when John went abroad for about a week and a half. We missed each other too desperately to continue pretending our affection for each other was platonic. Kathleen spent those ten days convinced that her feelings were unreciprocated and therefore convinced that she'd be avoiding John for the rest of grad school. John spent those ten days planning to ask her out as soon as he got back in the country. Luckily, Kathleen had agreed to pick John up from the airport when he returned—so the rest, as they say, is history.

The next four years of our relationship saw plenty of changes. Most notably, John finished graduate school and got a job in Munich, which meant that the transatlantic long-distance that first made us realize our feelings for each other became a permanent part of our lives. We owe the success of our relationship to redeye flights, FaceTime calls, "podcast dates," and text-message threads of cute animal pictures. John came to visit Kathleen in San Diego in February of 2020. The plan was that Kathleen would return with him to Munich in April. Before that could happen, COVID-19 hit the US and Europe. John was stranded in California. The present had never felt more chaotic; the future had never felt more vague. On July 21st, 2020, John suggested that we take a walk to a beautiful little park nearby—one of the few out-of-the-house activities then allowed by COVID restrictions. At that park, John told Kathleen that, while so much was uncertain, there was one thing of which he was very certain: that we should spend the rest of our lives together. He asked Kathleen what she thought. Kathleen said yes.

The world has not gotten much less chaotic in the two years since then—but we have not gotten any less certain in our commitment to one another. You have all loved and supported us before this relationship began and through its duration. We are so excited to celebrate our love for one another in community with all of you.