We met in 2002 when the Sanchez family moved from Charlotte, NC to the small town of China Grove, NC. The Pinion family has lived in the China Grove area for generations, and started attending New Hope Presbyterian Church not long before the Sanchez's arrived and began attending. We weren't best friends right off the bat, but it didn't take long for us to become friends and as we grew up, we did so together. Now, Austin and his father Todd believe adamantly that it was love at first 5 year old sight when I first walked by, but that is still to be confirmed for me. Over the years, we began hanging out and playing various video games together outside of church and even apart from the rest of the kids from our church group. Heading into highschool Austin asked me if I would go out with him, but my dad Pablo had literally said a few days ago, " You are NOT going to be dating anyone anytime soon. That's for looking for your husband." and I agreed that I didn't want to date anyone for a couple years. At least not until I could drive myself to my own dates! Austin was let down, but he understood that I needed to wait. It was easier said than done though, because we were still best friends at this point, we didn't want anything to be awkward, but it kinda was. We had some rough patches that were very hard to get through, but we knew we wanted to stay friends so we worked it out. Things got a little better when Austin dated another girl, but that only lasted a short while, as we began to realize that we couldn't stay away from each other. After they broke up, we were both 18 years old and at that point couldn't wait any longer to date. We attended senior prom in 2015 together and went separate ways a bit just because of college choice. Living 1-3 hours apart during the entire 4 years of college was no simple task, but everytime we fight and everytime we have issues we resolve it through love and understanding. We both graduated college with biology degrees on the same day in 2019. After all that, 5 years later here we are! We have been through quite a lot together over the last 18 years, but we do the best we can possibly do for each other.