Sonja's brother, Nat, had put Max and Sonja in the same Slack Group with a group of friends as a place to share ideas. They'd spoken occasionally as part of the group but were never formally introduced. One day, Max was going to be up visiting Boston schools to recruit users for his new fundraising platform, Givebutter; so he messaged Sonja through the Slack Group to see if she wanted to get coffee. Sonja didn't exactly know who he was, but said "yes" since he was in the group. She then promptly texted her brother to ask how he knew Max, and found out he was the nephew of their close family friend! She also told her brother how cute she thought Max was, and Nat said he suspected they may really get along... Before the coffee date, Max asked if Sonja knew any student groups who did a lot of fundraising, and Sonja told him she was the President of a student run 501c3. From that moment, it became totally unclear whether their subsequent coffee date was one of romantic interest, or if Max just wanted to get her nonprofit's business. In the end, he got both (but not for a while...)

Max and Sonja only texted for a week after they got coffee. After all, he was living in DC, she was in Boston; he was running a company, she was finishing school; neither of them were interested in dating at the time. It would never work. But about a month later, Sonja's brother published a rather interesting book (ask him about the subject matter during the cocktail hour). As any supportive friend would, Max posted a review on Amazon. Taking the excuse to restart the conversation, Sonja screenshotted the review and sent it to Max in a text. The restart worked, and this time they kept texting. These conversations quickly evolved into what the couple would later call their "Love Letters" -- texts that were paragraphs long, but only sent once every few days. Through these long letters, the couple slowly got to know each other. In March, Max's cousin, Lee, got married! You may remember that Max is the nephew of Sonja's family friends? Lee is part of that family, so Sonja was invited to the wedding (okay, well, really, her parents were invited to the wedding, and Sonja took her Dad's RSVP -- but imagine where we'd be if she hadn't!). Max, of course, was also at the wedding. The night before the big event, Max bought Sonja a glass of Cava at a rooftop bar. And they danced the night away on Saturday. They kept texting after the wedding, but it became increasingly clear that their original denials around not wanting to date weren't holding up. After another few weeks of love letters, Sonja came home to DC for the summer. Max invited her to attend his graduation, though they still were not officially dating. Sonja sat next to Max's Dad for four hours during Max's actual degree ceremony (his entire family joined for the school-wide ceremony) with no explanation as to why she was there, other than "we are good friends...?" Later that week, on May 22, 2017, the couple put themselves out of their misery and made it official over Italian food.

Sonja likes to say that it was the most surprised she could have been for it not being a surprise at all. Sonja and Max talked for a long time about getting engaged. They talked to each other, they talked to couples in their life that they look up to, they talked to a couples' coach (highly recommend - ask them about it!). And together they made the decision they were ready to take their relationship to the next stage. But how to actually do it? They picked out the ring together, and at that point, Max completely cut Sonja out of the planning. He told her the first two weeks of November leading up to her birthday were totally reserved -- a romantic gesture would happen every day, but she never knew which day would be "the" day. One evening they cooked together, one evening Max got them a private dance lesson, one day he got them back into Sonja's university house courtyard, where they once spent so much time plotting world domination on a hammock. He let a few details slip, enough so that Sonja assumed she had figured out exactly when it was going to happen (November 7th), and where (Rhode Island). She was so confident, in fact, that when Max completely changed plans 36 hours before November 5th, she never saw it coming. Max told her to get dressed up and be ready to leave the apartment at 4:30pm. They started walking around the Boston Esplanade, towards a specific outcrop overlooking the city where the couple had spent their 3rd anniversary (locked down during Covid, they brought a thermos of champagne and sat on a bench to watch the sunset). When they arrived at the specific spot, a picnic blanket was set up with champagne and flowers. We think you can guess what happened next...!