Believe it or not, we first met at Fayetteville Elementary School where Kyle was in the grade above Karie in the early 2000s! In 2013, a mutual friend tried to convince Karie to dance with their cousin Devin's friend, Kyle. Although she was tentative at first, the first time we slow danced together at Scott Donato's Tractor Twang, Karie immediately felt safe and secure in his arms, and knew she would be able to depend on him with anything moving forward. During one of those first slow dances, Kyle mentioned that he was enlisted in the US Marines and would be shipping off to bootcamp at Parris Island, SC later that year. That slow dance ended up meaning a lot more than either of us expected.

Shortly before Kyle was going to be shipping out, Kyle had asked again if we wanted to give a relationship a go. Although tentative at first, Karie finally agreed. Over the course of the next 13 weeks, Karie kept her promise to a letter a day (including a 19th birthday card & some pictures of Channing Tatum). Receiving the call from him after the Crucible was one of the most rememberable calls Karie received- even if she did ignore the unknown number a few times too many. Those 13 weeks, were only the start to our long distance. The next 4 years included Kyle living at Camp Lejeune, NC for the majority of the time, with 6 months in Romania and Karie moving to Clarion, Pa for college. On numerous occasions, we would travel to each other to visit but in between those visits, we would text, Skype, snapchat, you name it to keep in touch. People said we were crazy- but we love crazy and we made it work.

After Kyle's contract was complete with the Marines, he chose to come live in Clarion to attend school. We were finally not just in the same state, not just the same zipcode, but under the same roof! In Clarion, we grew even more as a couple. We learned to traverse this new chapter with the help of friends we met in school who we are blessed to still have in our lives today. After school, we moved to a house in Shippenville, Pa. where life just made sense. During 2020 however, we started to think that maybe we needed to move closer to family again. In 2023, we left behind our favorite brewery (Clarion River Brewing Company), Karie's first real job, new friends that had become family, and the life we had created to move back to Franklin County.

After remodeling our home, traversing new challenges of becoming home owners, being unemployed for a few months, we were able to re-establish our life back in Chambersburg. Although we are still trying to find "our places" in Chambersburg, we are able to spend time with our families and watch the little ones get bigger and spend precious time with the rest of the family in game nights, birthday celebrations, and other parties throughout the years.

One thing Karie always asks to do while at the beach is to wake up early (before everyone else usually) and go watch the sunrise on the shore. This past summer, while at Bethany Beach with the Leister family, Kyle asked if we wanted to go watch the sunrise on the last day, as we hadn't yet done so yet. Of course Karie was okay with that plan. When we woke up at 5am to go catch the beautiful sunrise to our surprise, the sunrise was very grey, windy, and just pure unpleasant. We stood and waited for the sun to make its appearance, and waited and stood. We watched a guy with some dogs play fetch, and waited some more. Kyle was adamant to witness it but Karie looked at him and said, "I really don't think its going to rise today." Kyle had positioned himself behind Karie, in a typical hug, but when Karie turned around and he was on one knee. There was really only one answer- YES! Although we kept it a secret for maybe 2 hours, we were even more excited to share our news with our loved ones that day.