We met the old-fashioned way: at a dive bar in Covington just before closing time on the night of October 21-22, 2023. In some ways, our individual life trajectories seemed to be heading in opposite directions at the time, with one of us beginning to close herself off after years of being open, and the other beginning to open himself up after years of being closed. As it turns out, Olde Town Tavern is where these two paths were bound to intersect - right place, right time. We both had friends independently drag us out of our homes (or in Sabbatical-Stephen’s case, his hotel) largely against our wills at the last minute to go out, and we will forever be grateful to them for doing so, because our lives immediately and permanently changed that night. Stephen was born and raised in Northern Kentucky but had been living in Louisville for the previous 10+ years, while Bridget was born and raised in Indianapolis but, after a brief stint in Chicago, moved to Northern Kentucky in 2018. We dated from a distance at first, as Stephen was still living in Louisville while Bridget was in Northern Kentucky, but 9 months after meeting Bridget, Stephen returned home. We went from living 1.5 hours apart to 1.5 miles apart in July 2024, and then Stephen proposed to Bridget a month later at the family farm where we intend to build our forever home when the time is right. Shortly thereafter, and exactly a year to the day before we were to get married, we found our perfect first home together in Covington on a historical block of Greenup Street and we moved in there together this past Fall. Throughout this time, there have been massive changes in both of our personal and professional lives. In addition to moving three times between the two of us, getting engaged, planning a wedding, and buying a home, we both left our old jobs to start new ones, only to leave those new ones for even better opportunities. At the time of the writing of this page, Bridget is transitioning to a special position at ORSANCO within the public information and outreach department where she will get to mesh her passion for conservation efforts and education with her skillset as an aquatic biologist while running the “Life Below the Waterline” program that is centered around the operation and exhibition of a traveling freshwater aquarium, and Stephen is actively in the process of starting his own private practice which will provide general psychiatric services in addition to specialized second-opinion consultations and is scheduled to be opened in July 2025. It has been a hell of a ride thus far, and we could not be more excited to see where this life takes us from here. We are eternally grateful to the universe for it providing each of us with the other, just as we are for it providing both of us with all of you. We could not be happier with our current station in life, and we could not be happier to be able to celebrate this formal transition point with all of the people whom we love most. From the bottom of our hearts, thank you for being a part of this celebration with us. Love, Stephen and Bridget