Introduction: They met on Bumble. Nick thought margaritas with Margaret sounded cute for a first date. They waited an hour for a table in the STL heat in August. It’s a bit of a miracle they made it to the second date. Date #2: They went to the Tower Grove Farmer’s Market. It poured down rain the whole time. Margaret had an umbrella. Nick was 15 minutes late because he was looking for an umbrella but failed to find one. Nevertheless, they walked and talked for three hours before they decided to try for a third date. Date #3: They played board games at Nick’s apartment. Margaret was impressed by how many two player board games Nick had. Margaret won, or at least that’s how she remembers it. Date #4: They had dinner and went for a walk in downtown Maplewood and talked about where the relationship was going. Things were getting real. It was exciting. Until… The next morning, Margaret tested positive for Covid. She quarantined for a week before agreeing to get Chinese takeout in a park with Nick. Date #5: They sat at a picnic table and asked each other random “getting to know you” questions. Upon learning they liked the same pizza toppings, Nick asked Margaret to be his girlfriend, and Margaret agreed. She asked what he thought a good timeline would be before getting engaged. Nick answered “I’d say no less than 9 months.” Margaret responded “Nine months sounds like a good amount of time, but I wouldn’t say no less.” They were engaged six months later. It still felt like too much time to her.

Margaret was at a winery with a couple close friends when they convinced her to create a profile on a dating website. Looking for inspiration, she read the side of the wine bottle: "semi-sweet and sun-kissed, best enjoyed on a patio." It worked; I swiped right. My profile joked about discussing takeaways from therapy on the first date (and boundaries). It worked too. A month into dating, we were walking through a local park when the two of us agreed this seemed too good to be true. Where was the secret catch? We sat on a park bench by a pond and talked for hours. We both knew we'd surely hit hardship someday, but decided we would overcome it whenever it happened. In the meantime, all we could conclude was that God was giving us a precious reminder of His goodness by bringing us together. I proposed six months after that day in the Missouri Botanical Gardens. Margaret said "yes!" Later that day, we went back to the park bench and drank a bottle of the same wine that God used to start it all.