We met at the beginning of our freshman year at Ohio University in 2016 where we were in the same business program. Alex says he had a crush on Lauren since the first day of class. We grew closer as friends throughout freshman year and over the summer. Fall semester of sophomore year, we were on the same Cluster team so we spent a lot of time together (OU kids know!). When our project concluded, we kept hanging out and eventually started dating in December of that year. Athens, Ohio is so special to us and we still love to go back and visit with friends! By senior year, we knew we wanted to be somewhere together after graduation, so we agreed to focus our full-time job searches in Chicago, Illinois. But when COVID pushed our start dates back a few months, we decided to make the most of our last-ever summer break and move down to St Pete Beach, Florida, where we spent every morning Instacart shopping for beer money and every evening watching the sunset at the beach. We were so grateful to enjoy that simple, peaceful time together before we officially entered the "real world". In the fall of 2020, we moved into our first apartment and started building our life together in Chicago. Since then, we've made some great friends, raised a cute kitten, traveled to amazing places, become regulars at the neighborhood Browns bar, and had so much fun growing up and figuring out life together. For our 6-year anniversary, Alex surprised Lauren with a trip to Cabo San Lucas, Mexico where he proposed on a beautiful private sailboat on January 13, 2024.