Nick was living in Omaha at the time but made a trip back to Cedar Rapids for Memorial Day Weekend. On Saturday, things started with Nick meeting up with some of the guys for day drinks prior to attending a friend's birthday dinner that evening in Iowa City. That evening, Nick and his friends arrived at Blackstone in Iowa City where Maddie was fortunate enough to be their waitress. As one can imagine, after several adult beverages, Nick was his usual charming self and piqued Maddie's interest. Now, here is where we may never know the true reasoning, but Maddie claims that she thought she knew Nick from her classes at the University of Iowa and upon seeing his name on his credit card, she looked him up on Facebook and decided to add him as a friend. Meanwhile, Nick had just made it downtown to continue the birthday festivities when he noticed he had a new friend request; and he was pretty sure it was their waitress from dinner. Quickly, Nick gathered his friends together as they did not want to screw up his approach to asking Maddie to meet up with them for drinks. Unfortunately, after some brief back and forth texting, Maddie was not be able to meet up with Nick that evening, but said she may have free time later that weekend. Prior to heading back to Omaha that Monday morning, Nick reached out to Maddie one more time to see if she would be interested in getting coffee, she accepted, and as cliche as it sounds, the rest is history.

After sitting for his final CFA exam in June, Nick was finally ready to pop the question. He gained approval from Maddie's parents a few months prior and looped them in on his plans to propose. He had Maddie's dad make dinner reservations at one of their favorite restaurants in Ames and had him invite Maddie and Nick to dinner under the assumption they were celebrating a recent accomplishment for Maddie's mom. Everything was going as planned, however, getting Maddie to wear a dress in the middle of July proved to be a bit of a challenge. After much prodding, Maddie agreed to wear a dress to dinner and in the meantime Nick stated he was taking Foster outside at her parents home. Nick quickly went to the car and got the ring box and hid it in his pocket. When Maddie came outside, Nick stated that he was finally able to get Foster to learn a new trick. He started out with a few tricks that Foster already knew and then he told Maddie the next trick was new. At that point, he got down on one knee, ripped the seat of his pants, got the ring out, asked Maddie to marry him, and she happily accepted!