We met a couple weeks before our freshman year started at Northwest Missouri State. Kevin was on campus early for football, Kelsey was there early for volleyball. The freshman volleyball girls were invited over to the freshman football players dorms to hang out / meet one night after practices. Kevin was the first guy that Kelsey met on campus (and vise versa). After that night, we started hanging out more and more. Some would say Kelsey friend zoned Kevin for quite awhile (oooops) but we finally decided to be together at the end of Sophomore year and the rest is history!

Kelsey and Kevin were on a two week long hiking roadtrip across the Southwest. Kelsey had been anxiously (and not so patiently) waiting for an engagement after 6 years of dating. As we were supposed to go on a Europe trip that summer to celebrate another friends wedding (thanks COVID), we decided to do this trip instead. Kelsey thought if it does not happen this trip, she is not going to be happy. Halfway through the trip, we were at Zion National Park doing a sunset hike at Watchman's Trail. As many know, Kevin is very into photography and videography so every place we hike to is a break to take videos, time lapses, pictures, etc -- which Kelsey is used to and it's not out of the ordinary. We were sitting at the top of the hike for what felt like forever, Kelsey finally asked Kevin if we could hike back down then go get ice cream. Kevin said he was waiting for the perfect time with the sunset and told Kelsey he wanted to take one last picture up there before leaving. He set up his camera for what was "supposed" to be just a self-timing picture but ended up being a video. Capturing it all, Kevin got down on a knee and finally did it! Kelsey is pretty sure she blacked out because she can't remember anything that he said but of course said yes! It was the most perfect moment together with no one else around. However, we did end up staying at the top of the hike a little too long and had a very, scary hike down in the dark.