It was the summer of 2015 when Gene and Maddie met. Gene was a team leader at Qdoba when Maddie started working at Qdoba as team member. They use to joke and pick on each other when they had the same shifts. Maddie went off to school in Springfield, MO a couple months after she started working at Qdoba. She applied for a job at a Qdoba down there and did not get the job with her pass experience. After she did not get the job at Qdoba, she contacted Gene in disbelief to just vent her frustration out. After that day Gene and Maddie started talking regularly and became very good friends.

Gene and Maddie took a vacation to Tennessee with all of their closet friends for the weekend. One of the plans for the weekend adventures was going to Cades Cove to take some pictures and go watch some bears in the wilderness. Friday night it had stormed pretty bad and the forecast for Saturday was rain all day. Gene was freaking out about the weather forecast all morning and Kristy asked Maddie to change out of leggings which made her a little suspicious to what is going on. So, she texted Jack telling him she had a feeling Gene is going to purpose, but really doubted he was going to pop the question. Of course Jack denied it. Since it stormed the night before, a lot of the trees had broken branches that had fell on the road and a passing in the creek had flooded so their car couldn’t make it a cross. They had got separated from their group and had to take a 20 minute detour!! Once they finally have caught up to their group, they came to an open field with a single tree which would make the perfect backdrop for pictures. All the couples started coupling up and saving Gene and Maddie for last. Once it was their turn to take pictures Maddie had stopped at the spot everyone else was taking pictures but Gene kept walking past. Maddie started to yell at him, telling him these pictures are going to turn out horrible because the camera will not be able to see them, but Gene grabs Maddies hand and walks her down to this area that looks like a cemetery. Maddie was beyond confused because no one followed us and were at an old cemetery. Gene then gets down in one knee and the rest is history.