Not too long ago, in what now feels like a very different era, a young lady (let’s call her Sophie) forgot her SAT prep book in her friend’s dorm room. Her friend (hey, Kelly 👋🏼), wasn’t around to give it to her so chose one of her residents to retrieve the book and deliver it to the front entrance of the building. That resident, a young man (let’s call him Ian), thought this Sophie was very cute and asked for her number. Later that week, Ian skateboarded down to Sophie’s Tribeca house after a late night shift at a MacDougal Street shop. They stayed up talking all night in the living room until the sun came up (and her dad woke up). They got to know each other the way one did before the advent of Facebook and smartphones - by hanging out and chatting for long hours on AOL Instant Messenger. Before long, they were spending a lot of time together, and romance blossomed. Over the next few years trips between New York, Boston, and Colorado become almost regular. There were visits to the Harvard Co-op, snow storms in July in the Rockies, breakfast at Joseph’s Two in Waltham, duck races in Boulder Creek, study sessions in the Brandeis Library, and tandem bicycle rides between breweries in Fort Collins. Then sometime around 2010 the two went on their separate ways, so let’s skip ahead a few years, or six.

Many jobs, relationships, moves and experiences later, that now less-young man reached out to that same beautiful woman for some friendship and advice. After reminiscing over good times past he invited her on a choose your own adventure: join him on a catamaran or up in the mountains for some skiing. She chose skiing - she knew those friends - and hadn’t been skiing in quite some time. She had fond memories of this particular mountain having spent some childhood years there with family. After deciding that they were ‘definitely not dating’, there was a trip to New York with a visit to the tree at Rockefeller Center, some department store lights, Sushi on Jones and suds at old haunts. There was a ride on the Amtrak Cascades up to Seattle, and rare steaks with friends in Portland, and a jaunt down the Oregon Coast where they stayed in a yurt on the beach under the stars and the supermoon. After some deliberation, a settlement was reached. Ian convinced Sophie to move to Denver to be with him full-time and give the relationship a real chance. Her move was on the condition that if it worked out, they would move to New York. After nine months filled with adventure, excitement, and a lot of prodding, Ian put a ring in a bowl of shelled English peas and watched nervously as Sophie nearly ate it. It came as a surprise to no one that she answered yes to his question, and the rest, as they say, is history.