The place where all good love stories begin: its 2010, in a basement after a highschool dance, with everyone hopped up on no less than 7 varieties of Mountain Dew. Marissa thought Riley was cute, so she stole his hat (cringe now, I know). But hey it worked! Sort of. From then on was a summer fling that existed mostly in the interwebs of hooooours long skype sessions until college when they went their separate ways. For the next 5 years Riley and Marissa lived totally separate lives, dated other people, but still randomly kept in touch. In 2016, Riley was living in Portland Oregon, taking a gap year and working for the Red Cross as part of the AmeriCorps program. He invited pretty much everyone he knew to come visit him, including a halfhearted invite to Marissa (who, again, he had not seen in 5 years). And she said yes. And she also brought her best friend. On her best friend's birthday. Riley had no money, but they had a great time (even though he gave Marissa and Christina a pillowcase stuffed with clothes because he only had 1 pillow to his name). A week later, Marissa is flying back to the midwest, crush rekindled, but literally thousands of miles separating them. Flash forward 3 years later to 2019 -- Marissa has hopped around the midwest (inviting Riley to Ohio, which he politely declined, which makes sense, its Ohio) and finally landed on wanting to live in Minneapolis. Its driving distance from her family, not as big as chicago for this small town girl, and had a good nonprofit scene. I KNOW WHAT YOU'RE GOING TO SAY. AND IT IS GENUINE CONICIDENCE THAT RILEY WAS ALREADY LIVING IN MINNEAPOLIS. Yes. Riley graduated from UW Madison and went to work at the headquarters of the student org he led while in college, STLF (RIP iykyk), in Minneapolis. So when Marissa arrived in March of 2019, with 1 friend in the city, she reached out to reconnect with Riley. And naturally, the flame was rekindled. Marissa and Riley spent days and nights together seeing concerts, checking out breweries, trading cribbage losses, and falling in love... falling more in love every day since. Star-crossed lovers, growing apart but finding their way back to each other since they were 17 years old. The happy couple now lives together in Portland, Oregon. They have many pillows. xoxo -- photo below is portland, circa 2016