Chuka and I met for the first time in 2009. He was visiting some friends at my university (I went to UT and him, A&M) and we met in passing. At the time we thought nothing of our meeting, especially because we were both dating other people. We have a lot of the same friends, so over the next seven years, we would see each other at the same events and say hi in passing. However, something changed in June of 2016. We were both at an African networking event. Toward the end of the night, Chuka saw I was sitting alone and came up to me and that was the first time we had a real conversation. I remember thinking to myself "this guy is really easy to talk to." That night, he told me that he had just moved to Dallas, so we ended up exchanging phone numbers in hopes of hanging out (as friends). We ended up meeting up at Kona Grill a couple of weeks later on July 15, but we soon realized that this wasn't just a meeting. We ended up talking for 6 hours. We were literally on the same page about everything and something just clicked. Over the next couple of months, we were inseparable and quickly knew that this was it for us.