Now age 29 & 30, to look back on the night Katherine and Ryan met - ages 12 & 13 - seems like a lifetime ago. Ryan's mother Stacy was up to visit him in Rhode Island, and took him on a trip to New Hampshire to visit Mike, a friend who she had met through business in Florida, and who also happened to be Katherine's uncle. Katherine was over at her uncle's house for the night to hang with her cousins, Lauren, Mikey and Greg, all who Ryan was familiar with from their time together in Florida. The adults left the kids at home to watch R-rated movies and eat pizza, and it was obvious from those first moments together that Katherine had a serious thing for Ryan. Over the next few years, Ryan would spend the summer in Florida with his mom, and Katherine and the rest of the Tancreti family would spend time vacationing in the same area. Katherine, Ryan and the other kids in the group would spend their days at the pool together and running around the Disney Parks. After a few of those summers together in Florida, Katherine and Ryan lost touch as they grew up and went on to find colleges, then jobs, then new lives in new cities.

Fast forward to 2015, the two hadn't spoken in over 10 years, and Ryan stumbled upon Katherine's social media accounts and saw that she was living in Boston - and had turned out to be pretty damn beautiful. Ryan spent a fair amount of time in Boston recruiting high school basketball players, and reached out to Katherine to see if she was open to meeting up for a drink. Katherine declined persistently - for quite a while before finally breaking and agreeing to meet. Clearly Ryan hadn't lost the charm, and the two began to see each other frequently, making trips back and forth between Springfield and Boston, MA, until they finally made their families (who knew each other) aware of the strange situation they had found themselves in. And now here we are, almost 18 years from when we first met, ready to start the rest of our lives together.