In 2017, Alex and Emily both relocated to Augusta, Georgia for work. Emily worked with Alex's roommate, and they were connected through team Friday lunches and kickball. When Emily's rotational program was finished, she remembers saying something along the lines of "see you never" to Alex on her way to Texas. Separately, Alex decided he was ready to make a career move. Bell sounded like a good fit, so several months later he also moved to Texas. There Alex and Emily reconnected as friends, playing more kickball (Alex is happy to have missed the shared trauma that was the dodgeball league prior to his arrival), enjoying Fort Worth, and grew closer. Alex won 2 tickets to an NPR dinner event, and he asked Emily if she wanted to join. She said yes and they had such a nice time, that Alex said when he dropped her off that it sure felt like a date. Emily said that you can't retroactively classify something as a date, but he was welcome to ask her on one. The next weekend Alex took Emily to see the Nutcracker (on Friday the 13th, hardly an unlucky day in this case), and their official adventures began.

October 15th, 2022: It was a beautiful early morning at Guadalupe National Park in the West of Texas when they started to summit Guadalupe Mountain, Texas’ highest peak, 8751 feet above sea level. After a long climb they reached the top and were awestruck by the view. High up on the mountain above the emptiness of West Texas, you could see for miles - into the future even. Emily thought this would be a great place to propose because it was so beautiful. Alex thought it would be a great place to propose if the ring had come in before their trip. Not disappointed, but wondering if not then, when? Emily and Alex returned down the mountain, enjoyed the vast beauty of nearby Carlsbad Caverns, and then returned to work the following Tuesday. That morning, Alex received a call from the jeweler that the ring was ready. Too excited to wait any longer, Alex hatched a plan to propose that same evening. During their regular Tuesday run with a friend, they would stop at the turnaround point which had a perfect view of downtown Fort Worth at sunset. 2 miles in, after lightly tapping his pocket every 50 feet to make sure the ring was still there and a stealthy pass of the phone to their newly minted photographer, Alex got down on one knee, truly surprising Emily, and they started the next chapter of their lives together before running off into the sunset. In his haste to tie it all together that day, Alex did everything but pack a different shirt that maybe didn’t have a hot dog on it. Neither of them regrets this decision.