… and I decided to crash my friend Leah’s kick ball team’s new years eve party in Dallas. As soon as we walked into the party, a tall stranger caught my eye from across the room. I leaned over to Leah, smirked and said “watch this” … I strutted over to his end of the beer pong table, shimmied off my leather jacket, did a quick hair flip, then looked over my shoulder at the handsome stranger I was trying to impress. Aaaaand nothing. He hadn’t seen me… in fact, he never took his eyes off of the plastic red cups at the end of the fold up table. Laughing out loud, Leah gave me the “abort mission” signal… grabbed me by the hand and whisked me into the kitchen for some Champagne to try and save me from any more embarrassment. Later that night, I got my shot at redemption when stranger and I ended up in the same social circle. While the details of that first conversation are fuzzy, I did remember the name... John Hopkins (I mean how could you forget that). I then got whisked away as the festivities continued, the ball dropped and it was 2018! The next time we met, it was Saint Patrick’s Day. Another holiday, another kickball party. This time it was raining and we reunited on the front porch of the house to hide from the storm. Another short conversation, but this time it stuck. We connected on the ‘gram but that's as far as it went. We kept in touch with “likes” over the next few years until something magic happened… Both John and I were at critical times in our careers and independently decided we were ready for a change. John moved in 2018 and I in 2019 to the best city in the world… Austin, TX. While the stars hadn’t aligned in Dallas, John knew he had a second chance to make this work. He slid into my DM’s which is how all romances start right? I responded "how about tonight" and the rest is history!

So there I was, NYE 2018, heading out to a random house party for the occasion. Dressed to the 9s and rolling into the night with Jonathan Hart. Nothing out of the ordinary, typical house party with a bar, beer pong and good times. I’m locked into an intense game of pong when out of the corner of my eye I see her, she wanders up beside me and take her jacket off in a dramatic fashion to get my attention (didn’t work, I’m super competitive, especially at beer pong and nothing could sway my attention apparently.) The game concludes and I start my search for this mysterious girl. She introduces herself as Kelly Ober something and we chat for a few minutes. Before I know it, it’s past midnight and she’s leaving with her friends, never to be seen again, or so I thought. Fast forward to St. Patrick’s day of the same year, another house party, and it’s raining and I’m on the front porch and I see her… “Kelly Oberschelp, hey!” (not sure how I remembered her last name in that moment but I did). She seems to remember me and we chat for a few minutes huddled away from the rain. Again, the timing wasn’t quite right with her still living in Dallas and me trying to decide to move to Denver or Austin… Well I picked Austin and as luck would have it, Kelly decided to move to Austin from Dallas as well. I saw this through social media and realized through our 2 interactions thus far, I never got her phone number. I take to Instagram and send the infamous “DM.” I don’t hear anything for a day and thinking I got left on read.. I suddenly get a text from a random number “Hey John, it’s Kelly Oberschelp…” YESSSSS. It took almost a year from when we first met but I finally had my first date set up and the rest is history.