We met in San Diego in 2011 at Jess’s Pacific Beach house. Jess had recently graduated from UCONN with her Doctorate in Physical Therapy, and Ryan had recently discharged from the Navy and was finishing up his bachelor’s degree at SDSU with plans to go to physical therapy school. Ryan was college classmates with Jeremy, Jess’s roommate, and he invited him to the house one night for a bonfire. It wasn’t at this time that we started dating, but we did become friends and hung around in the same circle and there was definitely a mutual crush between us. Ryan eventually shadowed Jess at her PT clinic to complete his observations hours for PT school applications, and Jess even wrote Ryan a letter of recommendation. Ryan got accepted into the DPT program and graduated from SDSU in 2016 with his Doctorate in Physical therapy too! In 2017 Jess decided to move back to the east coast for some temporary PT contracts with plans to move back to San Diego eventually. We kept in touch while Jess was gone, and Ryan was even on the lookout for jobs and apartments for Jess for when she returned. Jess moved back in January of 2019. We tried to make plans to get together a few times, but it didn’t work out until April, when Ryan asked Jess to go to the Lakeside Rodeo. Was it a date?? Ryan says it definitely was a date, and Jess wasn’t sure but was still excited to go! We totally hit it off and within 2 weeks Jess prompted the “what are we?” question since there wasn’t much time to waste and we didn’t want to ruin our friendship if things didn’t work out. Soon after, Ryan bought a house which we now own together, and that same year we also got our dog Penny who we are pretty sure is actually a human. We survived a pandemic as healthcare workers in 2020 together, and then quite possibly the most difficult year of our lives in 2021. This year has been much better than last and we are so grateful. We both switched career paths and could not be happier. Ryan works at Cranial Technologies making helmets for babies with plagiocephaly (flat head) and Jess works in medical device now at NuVasive as a Sales Trainer. We got engaged on April 8th, 2022 and decided we don’t want to wait any longer to be married. See you in October!!