We're getting married!

Adam - When it comes to how you met your spouse, you always hope you have a good story to tell your kids and grandkids one day. Some people meet at a bar, some were high school sweethearts, and others were in love at first sight. Our story has a little bit of everything. I had been leading a small group through our church for a couple of years when one semester, this gorgeous girl named Katie joined. I hadn’t intended to use the small group to meet someone, but I had told myself if I happened to meet someone through that kind of common interest, I couldn’t really do much better. I remember when we were doing icebreakers we were describing our ideal weekend in Columbia, and Katie and I had the exact same answer. At that point, she was on my radar as someone I definitely wanted to get to know better. We got to know each other better in the following weeks, sharing little flirts here and there like talking about how we wore the same glasses and how we both liked to play Boggle. Yes, we bonded over one of the nerdiest possible things people can bond over. One night Katie came up to me after small group and told me she was having fun playing me in Boggle for iPhone… but I hadn’t actually downloaded it yet. Turns out that she was playing some other random dude named Adam and talking with him through the chat on that app. After that conversation, I downloaded the app and we played/chatted with each other, so I do kind of owe that random Adam for giving Katie a nice way to break the ice with me. We continued to talk and play (she did finally give her number) until finally one day we were talking about how we both had MoviePass (remember that?) and I mentioned that we needed to put it to use. I ended up asking her out to dinner and a movie and she said yes, the first of many dates! We have shared so many amazing memories together since then and I can’t wait until I get to call her my wife!

Katie - After surviving quarantine together, we planned a camping trip to Yellowstone and Grand Tetons National Parks. Most of my friends had tried to convince me Adam was going to propose on this trip but I refused to get my hopes up because although we had talked about marriage for a while, there were no clues it was happening over the trip. I mean, we were camping for six days straight and couldn’t shower for the first half of the trip due to covid restrictions at Yellowstone. Nothing about that screams romantic proposal. The morning we arrived at the park we got there too early to check in to our camping spot so with the Jeep packed to the top we were just driving around seeing the sights before checking in. We stopped at a Moose observatory trail and decided to get out to stretch our legs for a bit. I thought we would look around for about a few minutes but Adam got out his hiking backpack and changed his shoes for the hike. I was confused but didn’t really question it because we had a few hours to kill. We walked for about 10 minutes until we hit a clearing in the woods with a creek. He leaned down to “get water” out of his backpack as I was admiring the view. Eventually he turned me around and he was down on one knee! We both kind of blacked out and don’t remember his exact words but somewhere in there he asked me to marry him and I cried/yelled “YES!”. The next six days were spent hiking, sightseeing, playing Rummy, talking about our future wedding/marriage, and just in complete engagement-moon bliss.