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Trees

Sami

Gowdy

and

Melissa

Barks

October 3, 2026

Big Bear Lake, CA
109 days109 d19 hours19 h41 minutes41 min17 seconds17 s

How We Met

Always have your business cards on hand

We met July 3, 2023. Melissa's bougee friends Kha and Marvin met a Chef, Earvin, and decided to host a private dinner for their friends where Earvin came a cooked a multicourse Omakase style dinner. Earvin decided to invite a crew of friends to help capture the evening, including Sami who was filming the entire event. The dinner flowed with a lot of wine and by the end of the dinner Melissa and her friends and Earvin and his crew we're all taking shots of tequila. By the end of the (drunken) night Melissa thought Sami was cute and decided to awkwardly give him her business card right before he left. While Sami did not reach out to Melissa's business lines, he did message her on instagram a few days later. Turns out Sami moved to Wisconsin for a job within that time. Melissa and Sami's first date wasn't actually until about 6 weeks later when he came back to San Diego for a weekend. They ended up going to Lake Arrowhead together and that was just the beginning of all their adventures to come!