We met at board game night at Canton Brew Works. After seeing each other a few times and noticing how cute the other was, Kate and Mark first sat down to play Kodama with a couple of other people. Only loosely acquainted until a later game night, we found out that we had both not only gone to MSU at the same time, but lived on the same floor of East Akers hall at the same time! That night we hardly played any games, just sat there talking for a long time. We also discovered our shared love of cats that night. Sparks definitely flew.

Kate found out about a Harry Potter themed trivia night at a bar/coffee garden in Ypsilanti and invited several people from the Canton Brew Works crowd. Only Mark and one other person were free on short notice, and then an hour before trivia started the other friend texted Kate saying she was last-minute going out of town (adding a haha-sorry-too-bad-huh because she knew that Kate was interested in Mark). So Kate and Mark met up at the coffee shop, only to find that there was no room for more trivia teams! But the kind guy behind us in line said that his team was small and invited us to join him. Mark tried to buy Kate a beer but she was too focused on trivia to notice. The trivia was way harder than anyone expected and Mark wasn't able to help much besides run the answers up to the host - and Kate was shocked to find she didn't know many of the answers! The nice guy we sat with said he worked at the bar across the street and invited the two of us for drinks the next night. We both agreed. But when we got there, the outdoor tiki bar where he worked was closed due to rain, and he was nowhere to be found inside the bar. So we shrugged and sat down for some cheesey bread and beers. We refer to this night as our "Accidental First Date." At the end of the night, Mark asked Kate if she wanted to get coffee some time. She resisted her sassy urge to say "I don't like coffee, but I'll have tea" and they planned a date. We had such a good time talking that neither of us actually ate or drank anything even though we stayed in the coffee shop until they closed. We stood on the Detroit River Front talking for a few hours after that.

Mark proposed on our third dating anniversary. When Kate came home from work Mark was waiting for her behind the bar in the basement, all dressed up. Both Mark AND the bar, that is! Mark had taken a half day off of work to set up this dreamy tribute to our three years together on the bar. Penguins representing Kate and black panthers (as a stand in for a cat) representing Mark. "What a wonderful romantic thing he did for our anniversary and no other possible reason!" Kate thought. But while Kate was wondering why Mark had asked her if she remembered anything about the teddy bear made of roses (she didn't), he came around from the bar and got down on one knee! All Kate remembers Mark saying is "These last three years of my life have been amazing" and then everything else that he probably spent a while practicing and thinking about is a blur as she waited for him to say the words "will you marry me?" (Mark remembers including "will you spend the rest of it with me.") Of course Kate said "Yes!!!" And then they forgot that Mark was supposed to put the ring on her so they just sat there at the bar for a few minutes before the ring came out of the box. (He did eventually put it on her finger!) And then Kate remembered the significance of the bear - Mark's grandfather had proposed to his grandmother by tying the ring around a teddy bear's neck, and later Mark's father did the same when he proposed to Mark's mother. So Mark kept up the family tradition! Mark asked Kate where she wanted to go for dinner to celebrate and she said "All my life I've imagined how I would be proposed to, I never really thought about what I'd do for dinner after." After dinner at a local Greek place, they spent the rest of the evening calling close family to share the good news.