~ 06 | 06 | 2026 ~

Michael and Gina both tried out for the University of Minnesota ballroom team in 2017. It's hard to say they "met" at that event, as Michael remembers Gina being too preoccupied with the dance steps to notice his introduction. And later, Gina only knew Michael as the "pizza murderer" who denied (and still denies!) being responsible for dinner falling off the stove at a New Year's party. Paired as competitive partners in early 2018, they started to build an honest and goofy friendship and eventually saw each other off the dance floor around their friends. About a year after dancing together for the first time, they broke the first rule of ballroom: never date your dance partner. To their surprise, the ballroom team thought they had been dating for months!

After Michael and Gina finished their studies, they settled in downtown Minneapolis and added two furry gremlins to the family: Mochi and Kokiri. When Michael got a job at the Federal Trade Commission in 2022, the troupe moved across the country to their current home of Alexandria, Virginia. After and in between, they've flown across the ocean to visit family in Germany and France, as well as explore new countries. With many more new places to discover, their eyes are now set on even more distant locations for the honeymoon!

As you can imagine, with such a slow start, the proposal did not come quickly! It took 6 and a half years from when they started dating for Gina, then Michael, to propose to one another. Gina invited Michael for a hike in Virginia, and, to his surprise, he found the rest of Gina's family along the way! Each family member had a memory from the past six years along with lyrics based on one of their favorite songs. And at the end of the trail, beside a beautiful overlook, Gina had setup a full picnic area where she proposed. A week or so later, Michael "surprised" Gina with a date night on what should have been a work day. After a sumptuous seafood dinner, he took Gina to the Kennedy Center to see Les Miserables (not aware of how tragic the story is). At the end of the night, they ascended to the Kennedy Center rooftop balcony overlooking Alexandria and the Potomac River where Michael proposed.