MaryEllen and Cody's journey begins during junior year of high school at Cody's prom! On a whim, MaryEllen was invited by her friend Rylea to come to prom with her since she did not have a date (God moment #1!), and while Rylea was introducing MaryEllen to all of her friends, Cody saw her from across the room and of course thought she was very cute. Eventually Rylea brought her over to the table Cody was sitting at with his friends and they were introduced to each other. They hit it off so well and proceeded to hang out majority of the dance and all through post prom as well. This also happened to be the weekend before covid lockdown so Dupo was the ONLY school in the area that had a prom that year (God moment #2!). Because of the lock down MaryEllen and Cody didn't get to go on many dates, but they did spend hours sitting in Cody's truck talking in the parking lot of MaryEllen's work. They both knew they really liked each other but because Cody was planning to work in construction with his brother and would be traveling a lot, they decided to "just be friends" because long distance seemed too hard. Seven months later Cody finally decided to ask MaryEllen to be his girlfriend and 6 months after that he left for basic training with the Army and MaryEllen moved to Savannah for college....which of course meant long distance--OH THE IRONY!!

After 4 years of long distance, MaryEllen had graduated college and Cody was finished with his active duty time and they finally got to spend their anniversary together for the first time-Celebrated by a day trip to the Lake of the Ozarks. A few months later on December 16, Cody and MaryEllen joined their life group at the Botanical Gardens for their beautiful Christmas light display. Unknown to MaryEllen, Cody had planned this who thing and used the life group trip as a cover up for his surprise proposal! He asked MaryEllen to marry him, surrounded with so much love by their life group friends. The cherry on top was when Lucy, her best friend from college, and her cousin Kaylin popped out of the bushes to surprise her. After 5 years together, 4 of which spent thousands of miles apart, MaryEllen and Cody are starting their forever together!