In 2018, Lauren, an assistant GM at a hotel in Missouri, heard from a friend about an opportunity at the InterContinental in San Francisco. Despite only visiting SF once, Lauren took a leap of faith and moved to the West Coast. She eventually made her way to Google, where she worked out of the building at One Market. Also in 2018, Zack got a message on LinkedIn from a recruiter at Google. He was about to delete it - thinking it was spam - but gave it a second read and decided to interview. In October, he moved from Portland to join Google. In his new role, he would also work out of One Market. Waiting for the cliché story about us catching each other’s eye in the cafe? Keep waiting. While luck brought us both to SF at the same time, our paths never crossed at One Market. One pandemic later, we both decided to give Hinge a try. Some weird chats, awkward dates and ghostings led each of us to delete the app before redownloading and trying again. Once we were both back on the app, it was time for the biggest moment of luck in our story: we saw each other in our feeds, swiped right and matched. After too much texting (according to Lauren), we had our first date at a cocktail bar in Nob Hill. We both arrived early and waited a few blocks away. Zack still got there first. We talked for hours and it immediately felt comfortable. Lauren didn’t even get up and leave when Zack admitted he didn’t really want a dog (note: you should never lead with this on a first date). We were both cautiously excited and intrigued to get to know each other better. That first date led to more dates, and those dates led to traveling together, meeting each other’s families and friends, eventually moving in together, a surprise proposal in Santa Barbara and now we are preparing for our wedding. Luck may have been what brought us to San Francisco, to the same company, and to the same dating app where we swiped right on each other at the same time; but it wasn’t what kept us together and got us to where we are today. It was our shared values, our focus on family and friends, our love of sports (albeit very different teams), adventures, nights in, and punk pop music - and how we complement each other in all the right ways - that helped build our relationship and make it work so well. And now we can’t wait to share our love with each and every one of you this August in Kansas City.