Jake and Maria first met sitting with mutual friends in Davison at Saint Anselm College spring semester their sophomore year. Jake likes to tell everyone that the first time he met Maria, she ate the food off of his plate. Although, Maria has a habit of eating others food, she did not eat Jake’s. She actually was finishing Colleen’s (one of her bridesmaids) pasta that she was done eating. Somehow that was attractive to Jake because from then on, they started hanging out. Twitter messages turned into text messages, and text messages turned into dates. On April 14th, 2013, Jake asked Maria to be his girlfriend. In the past 6.5 years, Maria and Jake both overcame mono together, helped each other through multiple surgeries, and suffered losses with one another. Jake supports Maria's love for Doritos and lounging around binge watching tv shows, while Maria supports his “daredevil” passions (as her parents like to call them) for mountain biking, dirt bike racing, and motorcycles. Four months after graduating college, Jake moved in with Maria and her parents and within six months they moved out into their first apartment in Framingham. Both of their careers (Maria working as a nurse and Jake working in security/dispatch) in Boston led them to move to an apartment in Medford in July 2017 where they have lived since. They started their own family in October 2017 by adopting Hank, the now 3 year old blue heeler mix, and all of their adventures include him. Many of those adventures involve good food and craft beer or finding a mountain to hike or fun trails to mountain bike. With everything that they have already shared in life, the two of them cannot wait to see what the future has in store for them. What ever it is, they know that it will be filled with laughter, kisses from Hank, and a cold drink in one hand.

Jake and Maria had a plan to hike Mount Major, but with rain in the forecast, they decided to take Hank and his cousin Tippy to the Middlesex Reservation in Medford on a long walk. Although Maria wanted to stay home and relax, Jake insisted that they go on a walk before the rain started. So off they went with the pups. Little did Maria know, Jake had the ring in his water pack the whole time. She didn’t think anything of it when he started taking her on weird paths trying out new trails. Complaining, Maria continued to follow him until they reached a rock overlooking the pond. At that moment Jake said, “Remember when I was upset that I didn't get to have Bubba help me pick out a ring for you before he passed away... well I lied”. Then he got down on one knee, pulled out a box with the ring, and asked her to marry him. Completely shocked, Maria asked “Is that real?” Immediately following came tears and the answer “of course”. That night, they went to dinner at their favorite Italian restaurant in Medford followed by a movie (Maria had pre purchased tickets to the Avengers before knowing he would propose). It was the perfect way to mark the new chapter in their lives re-creating their first date that they shared while in college; dinner and a movie.