We both decided to try online dating and after a few bad dates, it was clear that we needed to look outside of our geographical locations! Steve sent Barbara a very simple but incredibly cute, "Good morning, Beautiful!" message. Barbara noticing that he wasn't in her state was very intrigued and excitedly messaged him back. After a month and a half of text messages, phone calls and eventually video phone calls, we decided that it was time to meet. We met 3/16/2018 (also our wedding date!) in Peoria, Illinois for a weekend. Our first dinner was at an awesome Mexican restaurant in which we shamelessly gobbled down our food and margaritas. We also enjoyed a movie date at the theater and watched The Black Panther movie and there we discovered our common love of Marvel movies. We ended our date with a quick walk to Peoria Lake, hand in hand, realizing in that moment that we were definitely falling for each other.