Matt and Josie met at the Stony Brook School in their freshman year of high school. During algebra class on Josie’s 15th birthday, Matt passed her a note with a math equation that, when solved, read i<3u (I heart you). Matt’s “grand, romantic” gesture worked and he and Josie began dating. They spent the next two years growing closer before separating at the end of junior year. However, they remained friends and even went to prom together at the end of senior year. As luck would have it, they both ended up going to Wake Forest University for college. By the end of their freshman year, they were a couple again and grew even closer during the three remaining years of university. Once they graduated, Josie moved away to start vet school at the University of Tennessee while Matt remained at Wake Forest for an additional year to get a Masters degree. They counted down the days until they could be together again in the same place. The summer after his graduation, on June 28th, 2023, Matt surprised Josie on a family vacation in the Bahamas during which he proposed to her and she, unsurprisingly, said yes!