Noah and Karina first met at Mesa Prep their Freshman year of high school. Karina had been at the school since 6th Grade and Noah started at MPA a year later. They knew of each other but did not talk to each other until early on in their freshman year. The math tutoring room was a popular spot for a lot of their friends to hang out during half of their lunch period. They first spoke there when Karina got Noah’s name wrong. Whoops… They began having more mutual friends and hanging out together. Noah remembers always thinking Karina was good looking, but also very loud. In 10th grade, they ended up in the same section so they had every class together. Miss Korth often assigned the two to sit together in math class, so they had to work together a lot. Karina would often play connect the dots with the freckles on Noah’s arm and he would begrudgingly let her do it. During school, Noah never thought that they would ever be involved beyond just being friends. When Senior Year arrived, the two had become pretty close. They started leaving school to get lunch together–sometimes just the two of them, sometimes others would come along. They liked the same music and had similar upbringings so they naturally got along really well. Noah and Karina found out they both liked Volbeat and they were going to be playing downtown Phoenix. Karina kind of liked Noah at that point so she agreed to go to the Volbeat concert together. Last minute, she chickened out because it felt like a date and she wasn’t ready to date again. Noah was bummed but they still kept hanging out. They went to friends’ going away parties and would go to lunch with friends that summer and so they saw each other a lot. When it came time to go to college, they did stay in state together though not at the same school. Karina had chosen ASU and Noah chose GCU because “he valued higher education”. Despite going to different schools, they still made time for each other. Karina didn’t have a car on campus so she started asking Noah to come get cheap tacos at Fuzzy’s on Tuesdays with her. She still didn’t want to date buuuut, it was a long walk from her dorm to Fuzzy’s on Mill and Noah was consistently willing to drive all the way to Tempe to go with her so she happily let him pick her up. Noah says this is likely one of the main reasons he failed a few classes his first semester… he had to cut class for lunch at ASU. The two made it official a couple months into their second year of college but broke up after the holidays. It felt like they had gotten too serious and Noah wasn’t ready to settle down. After a few months of very little contact, Noah asked if he could come hang out. She let him stop by and he told her that he missed her and wanted to give their relationship another chance. So on April 9, 2018, they decided to make it very official and they’ve been together ever since Through countless concerts, Noah’s long distance internship in Dallas, a global pandemic where they rarely got to see each other, and moving in together when things were getting serious, they stayed together. Karina got an offer for a promotion in Houston in February 2022 and they decided Noah would help her move out there and then follow her out there after he left his job in Mesa. On March 1, 2022, before the big move, Noah took Karina to the Desert Botanical Gardens after a stressful day at work. She knew that it was coming soon but Noah did his best to make his proposal a surprise. When Noah found just the right spot in the middle of the gardens, they watched the sunset over Papago. Noah asked if anything could make Karina’s day better and she joked, “a strong margarita at Fuzzy’s…” He turned her around to face him and said, “well, we’re definitely going to do that but how about this…” as he got down on his knee and he proposed. She happily said yes and they walked around the rest of the gardens excitedly. Of course, to celebrate the occasion, they went to Fuzzy’s for tacos and margs.