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Alyssa's account- My least favorite thing to tell people about our relationship is that we met online, but it is very relevant to our story. On Bumble, if both people swipe right on each other, they match. After a match, the woman has to reach out first. So, being the woman, I slid in his DM's after matching on November 11th, 2024. "hey Cole! so you know lots of disney songs? what's your favorite disney movie??" Bad capitalization and all! Turns out, Tangled was both of our favorites! I don't want to embarrass him too bad, but Cole apparently has a thing for Flynn Rider! The next day, Cole asked me about my dreams. I said I'd love to build a house I love, have a garden, hunt for meat, grow my fruits and veggies, and homeschool my kids. He said "Oh my gosh, this is exactly what I want too, can I marry you now??😂" I thought that was pretty bold and we should probably go on a date before I agreed to marry him or anything, so I suggested we meet up! We ended up going to my favorite coffee shop in Salem the NEXT DAY! We had barely spoken, but I felt safe for some reason, and drawn to the few conversations we had had in the short time we had known each other. Next thing you know, we have plans for me to go with him to Portland to meet his parents. He picked me up after class on November 27th, and we sat in the car talking for a bit before we left. He asked me how I thought things were going, and in my answer I mentioned how I thought it was fair to say we were "dating" but I wasn't comfortable with boyfriend/girlfriend labels until he asked me. He said, "Well in that case, would you want to be my girlfriend then?" Just over a year later, we got engaged on December 20, 2025! I wonder what my November 11, 2024 self would have thought if you told her the guy she matched with on Bumble would be her husband in just 614 days. Cole’s account- We matched on Bumble on Monday, November 11, 2024. We talked throughout the evening and by the afternoon of the next day, had already scheduled a time to meet in person on Wednesday the 13th. We met up at Governor’s Cup in Salem, although Cole mistakenly went to the sandwich shop next door first, and talked for a few hours because we both had plans that night. We made plans for the following Saturday because Alyssa was already in Corvallis for work. She got out early though, so we met up to spend some time together before the movie started. We walked around for a little bit, until we made our way into Ashley’s Furniture where we talked about what we thought about the different things that we saw and even what our ultimate plans were for a house, family, and dreams that we had. After Ashley’s we went to watch The Wild Robot, we went to get ice cream, and then we prayed together, which we’ve done together every night except for two nights when Cole was at Lake Shasta. We just started spending more and more time together, and on November 27 we were officially boyfriend and girlfriend. We had our first kiss on January 16, 2025. On January 23 we said I Love You for the first time. We spent almost all of spring break together, spending the first half in Joseph OR with Alyssa’s grandparents, and the second half in Tri-Cities Washington with Cole’s family for a wedding. As time went on, we just started spending more and more time together, and it became more the question of when we would get engaged, not if. After an amazing year spent together with so many fun memories and random things that we did, Cole finally proposed on December 20, 2025.