Stephani and Nate don't have an incredibly linear story, but it's a fascinating one. Stephani and Nate officially met on their first day at Libertyville High School, August 10th, 2010. They didn't have any classes together up until their junior year, where they shared a law class and Stephani sat two desks behind Nate. It was a tale as old as time: Nate had a crush on Stephani, and but she didn't know it, and also had a boyfriend. They both can agree they spoke maybe once or twice throughout the year, and never really interacted again during high school, as they both were incredibly introverted. Throughout the years, the two followed different endeavors: Nate went into the Marines, and Stephani went to college at Loyola University Chicago to pursue public relations. In 2017, Nate followed Stephani on Instagram, upon which Stephani realized she had a crush on the boy she'd spoken to twice in high school and now lived in the desert, and they enjoyed a thrilling Instagram conversation that lasted for six messages, started by Stephani, after Nate had gone through and liked 9 of her posts. They never spoke again, however, Nate kept liking her posts (smooth!). Flash forward to 2023, when Stephani opened the dating app, Hinge, to delete it after a series of terrible dates, and noticed she'd received a "super like" from Nate. She immediately accepted the message request (after frantically texting her two best friends that the cute guy from high school had liked her on Hinge) and the two began texting constantly. At the time, Stephani was on a business trip in St. Louis, and so their interactions were entirely over the phone. They would text late into the night about anything and everything, and after two days, Nate asked Stephani on a date for when she got home from St. Louis. She said yes and couldn't wait to get back. Their first date consisted of drinks at Mickey Finn's Brewery in Libertyville, their hometown, where Nate was back living after finishing his service with the Marines in 2020. They had amazing conversation, laughs, and were convinced the bartender was an old classmate (he was not), closed down the bar, only to realize it was a Tuesday and everything else was closed. So they went where anyone else would go when it is 40 degrees outside and damp: a parking garage. So the two stood outside in the chilly garage for another four hours, talking and laughing, and detailing everything that had happened in eachothers lives in the decade since they'd last interacted, and how they'd had crushes on each other on and off for the past decade, when they both thought the other was either taken, living somewhere else, or their timelines just kept missing each other until that one night in October. Their first date went amazingly, and there was a second, then third, and on their fourth date, a wedding! Stephani asked Nate to be her plus-one to her friend's wedding in Chicago while they were on their second date (which is a story within itself that is a favorite of the couple to tell), and he said yes, and that night he asked her to be his girlfriend. Ten months later, Nate got down on one knee and asked Stephani to marry him on a picturesque walk through Independence Grove in the town that started it all. If you ask them both to this day when they both knew when they were going to marry each other, they both say, without hesitation: "the parking garage on our first date".