We met in the summer of 2017 while Stephen was interning in San Francisco. We matched on the dating app Bumble, and our first date was Sunday brunch. We hit it off right away and spent a lot of time together before Stephen had to go back to Alabama to finish his MBA. We stayed in touch and met each month we were apart in different cities around the country: Philadelphia, Las Vegas, Austin, Phoenix, Sedona, Nashville, San Francisco, Lake Tahoe, Birmingham and Destin. After 9 months of long distance, Stephen moved back to SF and found an apartment down the street from mine in the Presidio. We spent the next 2 1/2 years in the city by the bay before moving to Philadelphia together in February 2021.

On October 24, 2020, we hiked Kirby Cove, a gorgeous ocean view hike in the Marin Headlands across the Golden Gate Bridge from San Francisco (you can see it in the background of the picture above! It's the wooded area behind us). It was the first time either of us had been on that hike. We walked down to the beach with views of the bridge, the city and the Presidio. We were the only ones on the beach when Stephen proposed. It was perfect!