Mary Margaret and Sam's marriage begins as a harrowing tale of unfortunate near-misses. These two attractive Millennials should have already known each other. They both come from relatively mountainous regions of the American South. Statistically their families do have two and half children and a dog between them. They are also both Episcopalians, and if you don't know; there are about nine Episcopalians on the Earth. They each graduated from Sewanee with degrees that don't translate into marketable skills (English and Theatre Arts). They went on from those graduations to work in Youth Ministry... It's just bizarre that they didn't know each other and would not have were it not for God's extraordinary power to disrupt and confuse and mess up everything.

You may be familiar with FOX's long running hit series, The Holy Bible. It's the story of how God wants to be in loving relationship with us and mostly we say, 'Naw.' And it's also the story of how throughout history some people have felt called to say, 'Wait why don't we not murder each other or hate each other.' And that usually makes everyone pretty angry. And even the people who think God and the Bible are pretty cool... well those people don't have a great history of getting along either. So when Mary Margaret and Sam each separately felt God was leading them in the direction of ordained ministry they were each at least a little suspicious of the other religious people. MM for sure was not going to date another seminarian. After all, those people are loony. Sam had a more general mistrust, believing these religious people shouldn't be walking around unattended. As it turns out though... they were more than just religious people.

Mary Margaret is brilliant and compassionate. When she sees injustice for anyone it pisses her right off. That compassion extends to other living things, not least of which is Raiford the cat for whom she was forced to live in exile away from campus to keep. She's a swim instructor. She's a game night host. She's passionate about her friendships and keeping in relationship with people. She laughs at all the right things. And among the greatest compliments of all... she's had at least one coworker describe her as an angry feminist.

Sam, like most people with theatre degrees, worked in restaurants. He dresses like the dad in a 1950s Hallmark card. He's a painter, or a sculptor, or a writer, or something—but mostly he seems to make memes and texts them to people who are in the same room. He will happily tell you a semi-rambling story that is tangentially related to whatever you were talking about, and if you listen closely you'll learn about some other part time job he once had. During one such story about serving High Tea to an African Bishop Mary Margaret stopped him and asked, "Who are you?" and that was one of the moments he felt most seen.

It's hard to say when they started dating. There was some made for TV will-they-won't-they, and some definite encouragement from all their friends. But several things might qualify as their first date. So instead of honoring that cluster of days and conversations they keep a Leslie Knope-style calendar with holidays like "Anniversary of the time Sam brought flowers and Raiford used them to destroy MM's laptop." Ultimately they admitted their love for each other while both were on a break from a shift at 1823... ya know... romance. Some year and a half later Mary Margaret was convinced Sam could not make a surprise proposal. He had carefully and meticulously planned how to secretly get the ring from her parents and it had seemed to go so smoothly, but she had known literally instantly. Like... the door closed behind them and MM said, "So can I see the ring?" But Sam enlisted the help of Emily, Jenny, Claire, Natalie, Jared, Frank, and about a twenty other people and convinced her that she'd been invited to a Girl's Night Out last August. The Girls (who are all adult human women, by the way) got Mary Margaret to Waterfront Park in Old Town Alexandria and walked her right up to Mirror Mirror, a sculpture installation that turned sound into light. Sam was inside the sculpture in a suit, presumably in case he had to run for mayor suddenly, and Jared was there with a camera. To her delight she had been successfully surprised. He asked her to marry him and she said yes. And then they celebrated with friends and received a blessing from Frank our beloved professor/priest/friend. It was perfect.