We had both been called for a lunch meeting at El Mariachi in Hamilton as new music teachers. Briana was already present at the meeting when Matt walked in. One of our coworkers said, "Is that one of ours? He's a cutie!" and Briana thought to herself, 'He's alright'. After the meeting we stood in the parking lot (in the 90 degree weather!) and talked for an hour. Matt was moving to Cincinnati and knew no one so he asked for Briana's number. About a week later, we received an email for another meeting! Briana sent a text message to Matt asking if he was going to be going to the meeting and even offered for him to be able to stay at her parent's house since he did not have a place to live yet in Cincinnati. Matt ended up not going to the meeting because he was finishing up his last shift at his college job but he remembers his co-best men asking him, "Did you meet anybody while you were there?" and he said, "Yes I did! This girl who was weirdly nice and offered to let me stay at her parent's house even though I just met her!" A couple weeks later, after the school year had begun, we started hanging out on Sundays to "lesson plan" for the week and support each other as new teachers. As November of that year came around we started hanging out more than our lesson planning time and found ourselves on our first date watching "The Peanuts Movie". At Thanksgiving, Matt had returned to Columbus and had texted Briana about how his friends from college were asking about the girl in all his snap chats. He told Briana that, "I said she's the girl I'm dating and they were like yaaaaaay". Briana responded by saying, "Oh, we're dating are we?? ;) ;)" Matt responded with, "Weeeeeell I would assume that's what we would call it??". Matt returned to Cincinnati with a candle for Briana as his first gift for her.

Briana had been waiting for months for a proposal from Matt. She knew it was coming but was anxious for the when! Matt had been waiting for the right moment (and for the jeweler to be open!) to launch his plan for the proposal. The Sunday before he proposed, Briana and Matt were at their friend's, the Pfeuffers, having dinner to celebrate the end of the school year. Briana was having a conversation with Erika about other weddings happening and how hard it was to get venues for next year. Matt could tell the pressure was on! That Thursday Matt left a series of puzzles for Briana to solve and snuck quietly out of the house at 7:00 AM. Briana woke up about an hour later and thought the house sounded eerily quiet. She noticed a note on the door with instructions to find clues around the house and solve them to find him. The first clue read, 'I'm on the flip side of Valentine's Day'. Briana found the puzzle she got for Matt on Valentine's Day and flipped it over to find a message that read, 'Look in Hyrule Warriors' (one of their favorite games to play together). She opened the case to find yet another note that read, 'Look for your anniversary gift'. She found her completed anniversary gift of tickets to musicals, concerts, and shows they attended together with numbers on the back of them and certain letters circled. She figured out the order of the letters and numbers and found a message that read, "Meet me at Rentschler park" which was the first park that Matt and Briana walked in together. Briana drove over to Rentschler park to find Matt sitting on a table with a guitar in his lap. Shortly after arriving Matt started playing "The Book of Love" by Peter Gabriel, one of their favorite songs to listen to together, and ended the song by getting the engagement ring out of his pocket and proposing to Briana. Through tears she said "Yes!".