In the spring of 2018, Eli's last semester before graduating from Bellarmine University, Eli decided to take a Tropical Marine Biology course which would travel to the beautiful country of Belize for Bellarmine's spring break. He had decided at the beginning of that semester that he didn't want to be in or start any relationships since he'd be graduating in May and going to work for the National Park Service that summer. Little did he know he'd find his future wife on a boat in Belize during his senior year spring break... One of the professors for that course was Emily's dad, Dr. David Porta. Ever since she was 12, Emily had traveled with her family to Belize for those spring break trips. The spring break trip to Belize in 2018 was no different, except this time Emily was a sophomore at Bellarmine, coming off a breakup a few months prior, with the mindset of just enjoying the beauty of Belize and sticking to herself. Little did she know she'd meet her future husband on that same boat she'd been on so many times before... On Friday, March 2nd, 2018, the Bellarmine crew made our way to the dock to hop aboard Goliath, the Tropical Research Education Center (TREC) boat that would take us to all the best snorkeling sites in Belize over the next several days. Eli and his buddy Sam (our Officiant and Eli's co-best man) were the smartest people in the crew because they thought to bring a waterproof speaker to play tunes on the boat while we coasted from site to site. Up until this boat ride, Emily and Eli hadn't spoken to, or really even acknowledged each other. But at one point, Eli decided to add the band Moon Taxi to the queue. Both Eli and Emily were sitting on Goliath's topside, basically back-to-back, basking in the sun before getting to the next snorkel site, when a queued up Moon Taxi song started playing. Within about 30 seconds of the song playing, Emily turned around to ask "Is this Moon Taxi????" to the random guy (Eli) behind her running the music. Eli whipped his head around so fast just to say "Yes...yes it is." For the next several days of boat rides in between snorkeling, Eli and Emily listened to music together just the two of them using the same pair of headphones, chatted about favorite bands and other fun and random stuff, and started realizing they were both pretty dang cool humans. They found themselves hanging out together each night at the Belize bars, and shared a first kiss on the evening of March 6th, their last night on the island. Little did they know what the simple question of, "is this Moon Taxi?" would do for their future... :)