Drum roll… We met on Hinge. Ever heard of it? Our first conversations were about euchre and Duke/North Carolina. Great topics in my book! But more than that, Katie was quick, witty, and easy to talk to. We were texting basically all day and night before we met. Don’t ask us about our sleep schedules. We had so much to chat about that we even kept a shared iPhone Note of things to talk about in-person. We had a plan for the first date… If things were going well, she’d tap my leg. Five hours later… No tap. Instead, she went to the bathroom and came back ready to bolt. She hadn’t realized how long the date had gone. Time flies when you're having fun. Luckily, she gave me a kiss goodbye, so I got my answer. Somewhere between being 40 texts behind and doing real-time “wrap-ups” on phone calls just to catch up, it all clicked. Nine days later, we said “I love you” and made it official. Fast? Yeah. But when you know, you know. Since then, we’ve traveled to Asia, Europe, and the Caribbean, bought a house, ended up with two cats, and somehow survived our downstairs neighbor in Milford. (Hi Rick) So when it came time to propose, I brought it back to where it all started, our first date spot Rusk. I can’t wait to marry Katie. I’d call her my best friend, but she doesn’t believe in ranking friendships… So I’ll just say she’s my person.

Kagan and I met in our 20s. (At least that’s what he likes to say. I was 29. He was… older.) I was freshly back from living in Japan and scrolling Hinge to reacquaint myself with the local talent. As I was swiping away, my finger stopped on a profile looking for someone who “accepts me as a Duke fan.” My UNC heart was ready for the challenge. I wonder if Verizon noticed the massive surge in my texting volume that started in January 2024. Kagan and I messaged back-and-forth incessantly, about a million topics all at once. My mom called it “serial texting” and would often lean over my shoulder and say “that’s a lot of blue,” referring to all my responses to Kagan’s messages. After 2 weeks of texting (during which I convinced him to get TSA pre-check, also serving as a government sanctioned background test), we had our first date at Rusk… The site of our engagement less than 2 years later. On that first date, I must have mentioned my love for Trader Joe’s sweet potato gnocchi. For our second date, Kagan invited me over to watch The Bachelor. I replied “sure!” and he immediately sent back a picture of sweet potato gnocchi in his fridge. The day after our date, he went to Trader Joe’s and stocked up in the hopes that I accepted another date. His thoughtfulness was truly just the start. He is also so witty, smart, fun, organized, cheerful, and extremely athletic (he's going to be pumped I said this). It’s the exact recipe for the perfect partner for me. Here we are, many bags of gnocchi later, and I’m so excited to marry Kagan. Not only have I learned to tolerate his Duke fandom, but I’ve embraced his many other quirks including (but not limited to): taking rec league pickleball way too seriously, being a Twenty One Pilots superfan, his KAGAN vanity license plate (not KEE-gan), privacy screen protector phase, fake mushroom allergy, freakish recall of college mascots, gray as a favorite color, penchant for Facebook stories, bleu cheese addiction… How much more time do you have? If I believed in best friends, he would be it.