For those of you that know Maine, you know that East Boothbay, Boothbay Harbor, and Boothbay are all VERY small (primarily summer populated/tourist) towns on the coast. For those of you that don't know Maine, we'll reiterate - the Boothbay Peninsula is VERY small and MINIMALLY populated for most of the year. In addition to the remote location, the year-round population of Boothbay Harbor has a median age of about 55, Boothbay has a median age of about 52, and East Boothbay has a median age of about 61. To clarify, in this small, three town area, more than 50% of the year round residents are our parents' age or older, and the other half is about 20% children. As you can imagine, the probability of either of us meeting someone our age is about the same probability as Maine having more than one month of summer. Mike grew up in this area - his grandparents lived in East Boothbay, and his childhood home is not far south in West Bath, ME. While he was always familiar with the Boothbay area, he spent most of his time in the more populated and age diverse towns with his friends around Bath. But that changed when he took a job as a Marine Electrician at a small shipyard in September of 2019 and moved into the East Boothbay family home. This was a huge adjustment, and he was trying to figure out how to make a life at 26 years old in a small town with a primarily older population. At the same time Mike was starting his new job, Molly was a year into her contract with the Navy - halfway across the world in Bahrain - with zero thoughts of Maine and no knowledge of Boothbay. Fast forward to 2020. Molly's contract is up and she makes the decision to try and find a job back in the states. Using a recruiting agency that happens to have a Maine Maritime Grad as her point of contact, she gets an interview with a small shipyard in East Boothbay, ME. She takes the job and finds a home right down the road in Boothbay Harbor in August of 2020. April of 2021. After working together for almost a year, and somehow never running into each other anywhere in town (including the SINGLE grocery store in a 20 mile radius), Mike and Molly began working closely together on one of the vessels in production. Getting to the end of the project, there was a particularly demanding day where Mike and another worker went above and beyond to assist getting the vessel ready for testing. Molly offered to buy drinks for all the hard work, but let's be honest - it was primarily because she had been here for a year and the only friends she had made were 55 years old. Two days later, Mike and Molly went to the Boathouse Bistro for drinks and had a phenomenal time. They struck up a friendship and began hanging out almost constantly. After months of spending time together, they both finally got the courage to admit that they might like each other as more than friends and decided to see where things could go. And the rest is history! 💕 Through all the career paths we both took, and all the traveling Molly did, we somehow both ended up at Washburn & Doughty in East Boothbay, ME. We truly believe the world works in mysterious ways, and through all the ups and downs and changes we both had in our lives, we were able to find each other in a small coastal Maine town. As Molly's sister Meghan would say, this town and love story might as well be a Nicholas Sparks novel. ❤