We met through a friend (shoutout Jayla Callens) during our Freshman Welcome Week at Franklin College. We were friends for over a year before the relationship became more over a trip to get free queso at a local restaurant. It was the first time we were together one on one and it led to late night conversations over music, school, and movies. After finding out Mackenzie had never seen Monty Python and the Holy Grail, Chris invited her over to watch it. After a few weeks of hanging out and walking Mackenzie back to her dorm, passing a large oak tree on campus each night, Chris took a piece of wood and carved it into a heart with their initials and the date he planned to officially ask her to be his girlfriend: 10.08.17. Secretly, he kept the remaining piece, knowing it would one day be used to ask Mackenzie to marry him. And on 10.08.24, exactly seven years after presenting the original heart to Mackenzie, Chris revealed a ring resting inside of a new heart made from the very oak they used to pass under each night. We married on 10.08.25, one year after the engagement and eight years being together, at the Gregoire Castle in northern Vermont.