Freshman Year During our second semester of our freshman year at Drake University, Kendall was walking to the Olmsted building to interview to be a PMAC (a leader for freshman orientation) when she noticed Austin walking away from the building, also clearly dressed up for an interview. She introduced herself and asked how it went. Later that month, Kendall asked Austin to go to a sorority date party with her, and while this could technically be called a date, they were just friends. For the next year and a half, they were mostly friendly acquaintances. Sophomore Year Kendall’s friend and roommate Mackenzie (Bridesmaid) often studied with Austin, so we saw each other in the library and around campus throughout the year. That summer, Kendall was living in Des Moines and working at Meredith Corporation, and Austin was living at home in Ankeny, a suburb of Des Moines. Kendall had a friend staying with her for two weeks who was also friends with Austin. She invited Austin over one night, and Kendall and Austin ended up spending the entire night talking, to the point where her roommate was quite annoyed. The three of them did a few more activities together the next few weeks, letting Kendall and Austin spend even more time getting to know each other.

Kendall is not an animal person, but for some reason she said yes to house- and dog-sitting for a coworker for two weeks that summer. By this point, we were talking daily, but had not spent any time just the two of us. Kendall was complaining to Austin how horrible dog-sitting was (it wasn’t—this was a 20 year-old’s attempt at flirting), and eventually invited Austin over to see for himself. So, while we will never own a dog ourselves (Kendall’s now quite allergic), our first date was a long walk with a golden retriever (or lab, we’re not totally sure). The next week, we went for a more official first date: Gateway Market for dinner, followed by dessert at Smokey Row. Post-College The final two years of college, we became more and more inseparable. Upon graduation, Austin moved to Seattle and Kendall moved to New York, so we traveled to see each other as often as we could. Two long years later, in the summer of 2019, Austin moved to NYC. After a month living with Kendall and her three roommates, we got our own apartment.

On May 8, 2021, Kendall was hoping today was finally the day Austin would propose (as she had been for awhile). Austin had just taken an actuarial exam after many months of weekends spent studying, and Kendall’s birthday was the next weekend. Unfortunately, he was acting very calm and normal. That afternoon, Austin finally seemed very stressed out all of a sudden, right before we went on a walk (something we do a lot). After walking part of the Brooklyn Bridge and down by the East River, we walked along the Promenade, which gives a great view of Manhattan. We sat down on a bench for a while, and after checking multiple times to see if there were people watching us, Austin proposed. Many months later, we are very, very excited to be celebrating with you all as we start our lives as a family!