On a weekend in April 2018, Tarana and her girlfriends went on a weekend trip to Washington, D.C. to visit the National Museum of African American History. Little did she know, she would be meeting the love of her life that same weekend. On their last night in town, Tarana and her girls went out to explore D.C.'s nightlife. While walking down the street, a man grabbed Tarana's arm attempting to make a proposition. Tarana, being the firecracker that she is, yelled at the man for putting his hands on her. It was at that moment, a tall, handsome man, by the name of Emmanuel, intervened. After calming her down, Emmanuel cancelled his Uber and whatever plans he had that night, and decided to take Tarana and her girls out for pizza. The rest is history. What started with a proposition, ended with a marriage proposal five years later. A gentleman from the beginning, Tarana always knew Emmanuel would be her forever.

It was my birthday weekend. I was out earlier in the day with my friends making most of a great Saturday in DC. Fast forward to that night, after a great day of festivities we were getting ready to head home. Aaquil, IK, and myself were getting ready to call an Uber, but IK wanted to stay out a little longer and make it a “Throwback Night” much to our chagrin. We compromised and ended up walking down U Street to an agreed upon location to grab an Uber. As we were walking, we ended up walking past Tarana, Nana and Darica. IK notices them and reaches out and touches Tarana and tries to talk to them. I assumed they would brush him off so we could get the Uber and leave, I was tired and it was 1am, I was over it. We make it to the end of the block and IK is still talking to them, but now it looks like they are going to gang up on him. As we are waiting, Aaquil says I should go help him out so we can hurry up. I walk over begrudgingly and see that all three of them are ready to attack IK. I immediately step in to diffuse the situation and start talking to Tarana and Nana, while Darica was in her own world. Once I noticed Tarana was staring at me pretty intensely, we hit it off and the rest was history! Now we are here!