In early October 2013, Kurie Fitzgerald met Elias Brockman for the very first time at a bourbon bar near Georgetown University in Washington, D.C. They had set up the date through an online app called Tinder. The first words he wrote to her were “are you radioactive,” a silly joke about her name sounding like Madame Curie, something she knew but that no one else had ever pointed out. He liked that she responded with a formal grammatical tone. A friend of hers arrived at the bar behind her, on lookout duty to make sure Elias was not a serial killer. But halfway through the date, Kurie dismissed her chaperone after determining that the risk was low. It’s a good thing she did because her friend would have had to wait. They sat for nearly three hours, talking a little bit, but mainly sitting together in comfortable silence, the type of silence that you tend to find only after having known a person for a very long time. It was an unusual first date that revealed an undeniable chemistry between the two. And so, a second date followed the first, and a third the second. And very soon, they were undeniably a “thing.” In the nearly 8 years that have passed since that fateful October night, Kurie and Elias have lived in around four different locations, in two different cities. They have each worked around five different jobs, and in each phase of their relationship they have enjoyed discovering little places, their favorite spots, sitting together and walking together, sharing valuable time, sometimes while chatting, but often in comfortable silence.