Tanner: I’m boarding a plane on my way back to USC from a fall break trip with my college roommate and now-Best Man, Brady Crimmins. Luckily, I choose the middle seat and Brady takes the window. After sitting down and getting comfortable for a few seconds a small, freckled woman in tight blue jeans sits down in the aisle seat next to me. I don’t think anything of it. I typically don’t let my mind wander when they’re out of my league. No reason to waste the headspace, ya know? Instead, I nap. Brady and I were working with a combined 2 hours of sleep between us. We’d driven from Boston to Foxborough, MA to Providence, RI to Putnam, CT to Worcester, MA and back to Boston-Logan - all just to say, “yeah, I’ve been to that state.” Anyway, fast forward to the airspace somewhere over Virginia where I wake up to a leg cuddled up against my leg. Nice. I might even be sensing a little bit of triceps to triceps action on the armrest but again, I’m not going to get ahead of myself. I’m a smart guy and I know that not every seemingly accidental touch of body parts means that I’ve found my wife. Plus, I glance over and she’s totally passed out. I try to fall back asleep but it’s not really working out for me. Eventually this girl next to me (who is now awake) grabs the reins and starts the conversation. I’m a little nervous but whatever, I’m nice, I’m friendly, I can hold a conversation with a pretty female (watch me). It’s actually going pretty well, I think. I’ve learned that she went to UNH and recently graduated with a Master’s from Pitt. An older woman *insert sunglass emoji here*. Then it’s over. We land and she’s gone. I don’t have her number - wait, I don’t even know her name. F#*k.

Let’s fast forward again to when I’m driving from Brady’s place in Atlanta to my place in Columbia later that same day. This isn’t my first rodeo. It's 2016. I’m tech-savvy and I’ve got valuable info. I get back to Cola and it’s game on. I open Facebook, I click on “Find Friends,” and I use two parameters - School: University of New Hampshire, School: University of Pittsburgh. Results: 7 People… 1 Female. There she is, with a few freckles and a Boston Red Sox hat. Lauren Barry. Send friend request. Again, I know the drill. Social media is a very low-risk proposition for a hopeless romantic. The worst case scenario is that she doesn’t accept it. No big deal. She’s older, she’s hot, and it’s worth a chance. But she seems really cool and I really like those big brown eyes. So I shower, unpack, clean my room and listen to some music ahead of the concert I’m going to that night. I check my computer and, what the…? A message from Lauren Barry. “I guess your name's Tanner then, haha.” We send a few messages back and forth and she agrees to send me her number. It’s really my day, I guess. She’s so funny and actually seems interested in me. I can’t believe how easy it is to talk to her. By the time I have to leave for the concert, I have the courage to call her and we talk for 15 minutes or so while I’m driving. The connection is real, at least I think it is. It’s so real that I text her any chance I have during the Jason Isbell concert (my favorite musician in the world), even though I’m there with a girl from class. We spend the next few days talking constantly. Finally we decide we have to meet up.

Lauren: I met Tanner on a Sunday, and by Thursday I found myself driving an hour and a half to Anderson, SC for our first date (despite my friends and family wondering if I’d lost my mind and recounting all the crime show horror stories that began like this). Walking toward the restaurant where we were meeting for dinner, I spotted Tanner coming from the other direction and didn’t even have a chance to say hello before he kissed me. Pretty bold for the nervous, nerdy type who could hardly formulate words during our first conversation on the plane. After dinner, we snuck into a state park after close (with much conniving on my part because Tanner is NOT a rule breaker), laid out a blanket and talked for hours until it was past midnight and we were shivering from the cold. It wasn’t until we got back to my car that Tanner dropped the bomb on me: he’d accepted a job that could potentially send him to any university in the country and he’d chosen the West coast as his first preference. He wouldn’t find out where he’d be going for another two months. I felt my heart sink because I thought the date had gone so well. I defensively said something along the lines of the timing being off, and maybe it wasn’t meant to be. Then Tanner shocked me when he suggested an alternative — we could just go for it. We clearly connected right off the bat, and what would be the harm in trying? I’d never been all in on anything in my life. It didn’t seem feasible at all, Tanner moving out west, and me, committed to a fellowship in Atlanta for another 8 months. But the idea of losing out on something special outweighed the doubts in my head. “Are we really doing this?” he asked, and once I stopped sobbing (as people normally do on a first date) I said, “ok, let’s do it.”

I spent the next few months falling for Tanner as we navigated our already-long-distance relationship between Atlanta and Columbia. At times it felt like a whirlwind. I met his family on date number two; Tanner asked me to be his girlfriend after a day on the Atlanta BeltLine in week 3; in week 4, he looked at me on top of Stone Mountain and said “I love you.” (I did say it back, after the initial shock wore off.) While our relationship was time consuming, it always felt easy and exciting. In a wave of relief, we found out in November that Tanner would relocate to his second choice, the Midwest. We agreed that if it was drivable, it was doable. In January, he moved to St. Louis to work for Washington University, and when one of us wasn’t making the 8 hour drive to the other, we met halfway in Nashville or got creative (ex. roughing it at a campground in Kentucky). When my fellowship ended in May, I joined Tanner in Missouri, where we made memories in our first apartment together until I somehow convinced him to brave the cold and move closer to my family and friends in New Hampshire in April of 2018. That December, Tanner dropped to one knee on the windiest day of the year (unconfirmed, but I feel it to be true) in York, ME while having our picture taken by the Nubble Lighthouse, under the guise that Tanner had “never been to a real lighthouse before” (actually confirmed true). And now a new chapter begins!