Our story begins the day before my birthday in 2017, we met at Friendly’s parking lot, which turned into a stroll along the Blackstone river asking eachother some of the strangest questions ever. Fast forward a few more dates and we had our first kiss outside of the Kenmore diner, which, yes, is another parking lot. It was on a trip to Salem that I asked Steph to officially be my girlfriend (you know, the “going steady” kind) but I told her I had a different plan to ask her, it’s just that the moment felt right, right then and there. So, Steph emphatically said “No! Do you what you planned!” So about a week later I played guitar and sang to her (beautifully, duh) “Something Just Like This,” by Coldplay and the Chainsmokers, a song that kept recurring early in our relationship (and is featured on the first mixtape I made her.) Insert month after month of dating, which was also month after month of preparing for a year long deployment, and I knew I had to let her know how I really felt. So it was there on the side of the United States Capital building that I told her that my intention in our relationship was to get married. In that moment, the bells from the Robert Taft memorial bell tower began to ring. We both knew that it was meant to be.

Just under a month later, I left to start work-ups in Virginia for the mobilization (where she surprised me when she showed up one day after taking a spontaneous road trip with Jen) 3 months after that, I was able to come home on special liberty for a few days before shipping out. I missed her graduation ceremony but got there in the evening. We sat behind a library looking at a duck pond where she reminded me that she was all in, and her words got me through deployment In the beginning of 2019, my plane landed and there she was waiting for me with open arms, I was finally back home. We started doing things together with the kids like a family, sports games, birthdays, trips, you name it. A few months later we bought our first home! I talked to all the kids in advance about proposing to their wonderful mother, then on September 28, 2019, I found myself in yet another parking lot holding a ring waiting for Steph and the kids to meet me for dinner. Months of preparing and this was the day, and the parking lot didn’t feel like the right place to ask. So I called her and told her to meet me at the nearest body of water. It was there that I asked her to marry me. She said “hold on.” She ran back into the car and came out with a ring and asked me to also marry her. We both said yes, obviously, or else we wouldn’t have this website.