Our love story starts in January 2014. We were juniors at High School East (HSE) and in the same AP Physics class. Although we shared many mutual friends, it wasn’t until I made the first move did our friendship really spark. On January 12, I sent the most important Facebook message to Zack - I asked him for help on some Physics questions to 'prep for an upcoming exam'. Little did Zack know that, as big of a genius he thought he was, his answers were completely wrong and I already completed the assignment the week before. That’s OK though…that first message at 8:12pm actually turned into a conversation lasting until 3am; we shared an instant and genuine connection as if we were best friends for years. We spent all hours of the day and night texting back and forth, and every day during classes flirting with each other. Our first date was spent throwing snowballs at each other on a snow day from school, and soon after, on February 18, 2014, he asked me to be his girlfriend :). We shared all of high school’s best celebrations together- junior and senior prom all the way through graduation. We were even more lucky to both be starting as freshmen at Binghamton in Fall 2015. While we were going to Bing with nearly 50 other students from HSE, it was fate that placed us not only in the same dorm, but also in the same hallway, only five doors apart. We spent countless nights laughing with our friends, had endless amounts of dates on and off campus and made invaluable memories together during our four years there. Following commencement in May 2019, we spent weeks on a beautiful trip traveling through Italy and Paris before Zack started work and I started PA school. Extra time living at our respective homes from 2020 to the start of 2022 allowed us to appreciate the little parts of our roots even more - this included countless picnic dates on the high school lawn, romantic walks on the Long Beach boardwalk and pool days in the summer. This was also when Zack had his now infamous Bob Ross-like afro, but that’s a story for another day…

Also during this time, we were so lucky to spend many weeks living together at a couple of AirBnBs in NYC during my clinical rotations in PA school. We quickly learned more and more about each other’s little quirks and made a tradition of walking along the boardwalk in Battery Park after work. We finally moved into our first apartment in NYC in March 2022. Zack proposed that August during a beautiful sunset in that same spot on the docks in South Cove Park near Battery Park Place. We’ve been waiting for this moment for 9 years, and can’t wait to celebrate with family and friends soon!