Nikki and Sam met during their senior year at UofM (Go Blue!), during a joint bystander education event. They were supposed to present to a new class of fraternity brothers, but were mistakenly never assigned a group. After thirty-minutes of frantically trying to find their group, and dozens of apologies by Sam, they spent the next hour sitting together away from the event. With different post-graduation plans, Sam and Nikki never thought they'd see each other again. Sam was off to DC for law school, while Nikki was headed to New York. But, the groundwork for connection had already been laid. A year later, they reconnected during the pandemic and started talking every day. After two months, Nikki was tired of having a pen pal and invited herself to spend a weekend with Sam in DC. Despite the fact that he was still home in Michigan and hadn't planned on heading back to DC until the fall, he told his parents he had to get to DC ASAP because his internship was going back in-office (it was not and never did). All just for the chance to see Nikki again. And it was worth it. They spent four days together, walking around the wharf, talking, paddle boarding, eating ice cream, and eventually holding hands. After Nikki got onto her train back to NYC, both her and Sam gave their best friends the bad news: they had fallen for someone hundreds of miles away. Almost four years, thousands of miles on Amtrack's NE Corridor, countless minutes on the phone, and two moves (one to Denver and another to NYC) later, June 19, 2024 arrived. Sam told Nikki that was the day his firm was having a summer party at Central Park (he even emailed her the firm's "invitation" as proof). So they headed over to the Park, where Sam popped the big question, and Nikki gave the easiest "yes". The surprise was sweetened when their families joined them to celebrate, with Sam's sister capturing pictures of the special moment.