Even though we grew up only 35 miles apart in South Florida, Pembroke Pines for Michelle and West Boca Raton for Eddie, it took both of us moving to College Station, TX, to finally meet each other. While Michelle was working on her masters degree at Texas A&M University, Eddie had accepted a job with the City of College Station Parks and Recreation Department in early 2014. Now, even closer to one another, it still took swiping right on a certain dating app for us to finally meet. Michelle had pictures of herself on the University of Florida campus, and Eddie had one of him proudly wearing a Florida State t-shirt. We each knew we had to swipe right so we could trash talk each other's alma mater and bring the rivalry to Texas. After talking for a little while, we had our first date on May 6, 2014, at an Italian restaurant called Amico Nave. We shared stories of growing up in South Florida, a bottle of wine, and a tiramisu for dessert. To this date, it is still the best tiramisu we've ever shared, but we like to think it was the company that made it so good. Now, over 10 years later, the rivalry is still going strong, and the tiramisu always tastes good as long as we're enjoying it together.

On February 24, 2024, we were attending a surprise birthday party at Lake Wauberg in Gainesville. Little did Michelle know, it wasn't the only surprise planned for that day. A few days earlier, Eddie had picked up the engagement ring from the jeweler and didn't want to wait any longer. It had already been almost 10 years after all... During the party, Eddie asked our friend Anusha if she could help take some photos of us after the party was wrapping up. Since we were at a lake with beautiful scenery, taking some pictures together was the perfect cover. As the party was wrapping up and Michelle thought we were about to leave, Anusha told her she wanted to take pictures of the couples out on the pier with the lake in the background. We walked out to the pier, and Eddie pretended to start posing for a photo, so Michelle did too. Then Eddie did what he should have done 10 years ago and got down on one knee to ask Michelle to marry him. She said yes!