Courtney and I found ourselves with about 10 other people on a work trip in Tulsa, Oklahoma. A dinner was arranged and everyone agreed to meet in the lobby of the Renaissance hotel. Sitting in the lobby, I remember seeing this beautiful girl walking towards our meeting area. She excitingly said, "Hi, I'm Courtney!" I am not sure how I responded, but I am sure I stuttered and mumbled out an, "I'm Jeff??" After a great trip, we kept in touch over the next few months and became friends. During the Bruin's Stanley Cup run in 2013, we agreed to go to the Harp in Boston and watch one of the Blackhawks-Bruins games. I will always remember sitting down there and thinking to myself, "is this a date?" The Bruins game went into 3 overtimes. Court did not even mention leaving and we stayed at the Harp until the very late end to the game (Bruins lost). We both had a blast and agreed we would plan something else. About a week later, with no doubt in my mind about this night being a date, we went for dinner at Sail Loft in the North End. My stomach was in knots, I was wicked nervous. We ordered drinks and I tried to play it cool and then the waitress came for our dinner order....Court needed a minute so I went first and due to the state of my knotted up stomach, I only ordered clam chowder. Unknown to me at the time, Court was starving (probably borderline hangry, which we all know is not good!) and upon hearing my order, she called an audible and ordered a salad! I still laugh at that to this day because I had no idea she was so hungry and changed her order because of my chowder order. Whoops! Aside from that small blunder, the date was awesome, we had drinks at Tia's afterwards and it was the start of an amazingly happy, exciting, and fun 7 years together!

Courtney and I planned a fall trip to Napa Valley for the fall of 2018 and I decided it was TIME for the big question. I found a vineyard in Napa named O'Brien Estates and called ahead to let them know of what I wanted to do, so we had a private tour and tasting without worry about lots of people being with us. We arrived in San Fran and headed up to Napa, ring in my backpack, never out of sight. With all the hotel nights I do, I was able to upgrade us into an awesome suite, but it wasn't ready when we checked into the Westin Napa Verasa. Instead of changing in a nice suite, we each changed in the lobby bathrooms. I was starting to get nervous, so in a full sweat, I was rushing, changing in a small bathroom, not ideal. Finally kind of composed, issue #2 arose. The ring box would not fit into my pants pocket! Trying to squeeze it in, Court is texting me asking what is taking so long, more sweat. I sat on the left side of the car, using my shirt to cover the obvious box shape in my pocket. We arrived at O'Brien Estates and had the place to ourselves and sat right down in the vineyard and began our tasting with our guide. Eventually, he offered us to take a walk through the vineyard on our own and I knew that was my queue. We walked for a few minutes, eating some grapes, until I thought we were in a secluded enough spot. While Court was facing a grape vine, plucking and eating grapes, I knew it was time. I got down on a knee, check. Knew what I wanted to say, check. Ring? Start to take the box out of my pocket and it got stuck! After a few seconds I ripped it out and she was luckily still just eating grapes facing away. She turned around, looked down, I asked her if she would marry me.....she laughed!! I stood up, put the ring on, she was shocked and laughing still and I said, "Is this a yes?" She said the magic "yes" I was waiting for and I finally stopped sweating. The future Ms. O'Brien said yes at O'Brien Estates and it could not have been more perfect or us.