Samantha and I first met in spring 2019. I had just finished college at Southeastern Louisiana, and my college roommate/Samantha’s childhood friend moved to New Orleans. A few months later, I went to visit and met Samantha for the first time. I thought she was beautiful from the moment I met her; however, we were both seeing other people at the time, so I didn’t think much of it. Fast forward a few years, and I see a picture Samantha posted of a husky, so I messaged her curious as to who’s it was. That led to conversation after conversation, and us catching up. She was living in Nashville at the time but was coming back to visit in two months. I picked her up at the airport and immediately took her on a date. We were back and forth between Louisiana and Tennessee for a few months until she moved back to Louisiana. 15 months after our first date, I proposed.

Our proposal was anything but boring! While on vacation in Peru, Ross’s #1 choice was sleeping in a sky globe & getting there by Via Ferrata (little did I know). After climbing 1,400 vertical feet up, we enjoyed dinner and conversation with the other guests. Once we were back in our pod for the night, suspended above the Incas Sacred Valley, he convinced me to go out to the observatory deck with a bottle of wine to see the stars. I had jokingly said he owed me for climbing and sleeping on a cliff for him. Kneeling as he poured my glass, he pulled the ring from his pocket. He said “I do owe you, and I will spend the rest of my life paying you back if you let me. Will you marry me?”