When we look back on the story of us, it reads as a series of near-misses—complete with overlapping groups of friends at the same high school and even a short-lived summer fling "five years ago." The near-misses came to an end when a fateful housewarming party finally brought us together in the summer of 2018, after Kirk moved in with two of those overlapping friends. Molly didn't exactly make it easy on Kirk—declining his initial request for a drink (on what turned out to be his birthday—ouch!). When Kirk made his second request, this time for a coffee date, Molly countered with a "trial date": a dog walk around Lake Harriet. Needless to say, the dog walk went well, and Kirk planned an impressive "real" first date; mini-golf on the roof of the Walker followed by cocktails. In retrospect, we should've taken our uncharacteristically low scores as a sign of good things to come (we each got a hole-in-one!). Less than two hours into that first official date, Kirk asked Molly on a second. And the rest, as they say, was history. In the years since that fateful housewarming party, we've added a second dog to our brood, survived a global pandemic, and recently purchased our first house together in South Minneapolis. After the series of near misses, we both feel extraordinarily lucky to have found love, partnership and genuine delight in one another. When Kirk proposed last December, Molly's 'yes' was the easiest of her life.