Rob and Tara first met while playing Starship Valkyrie in Orange County and Long Beach, back in early 2014. Starship Valkyrie is a science-fiction crisis simulator written by Christian Brown, and for which Tara and Rob are now both writers and organizers. In 2014, Tara played bridge officer to Rob's surly robot and surlier engineer. When Rob ran a game about space bees, Tara knew they were meant to bee. It was eight months between the day they met and their first date.

Our first couple of dates were in Irvine, near UCI, but much of our courtship took place on the weekends from a base in West LA. We went to see Guardians of the Galaxy for our first movie together. One of our most memorable dates was walking from the Santa Monica Pier to Venice Beach along the surf, picking up shells along the way, and walking back to the pier with a perfect view of the sunset. We still have the shells.

Rob proposed, fittingly enough, after a Starship Valkyrie game in November of 2018. Many of the players were folks with whom we had played since we first met. It was an appropriate proposal in a starry-eyed courtship.