Jake was a new emergency medicine resident at St Vincent Hospital in July of 2024. He had rotated on my unit in the fall of 2024, which is when we first become friends and exchanged numbers, as I had told him he could come fishing with my family. There was no interest at this time between either of us and we went about our lives for the next few months. Until January of 2025, he was walking around the unit that I worked on, and we talked for over in hour in my nursing pod. Shortly after he asked me out for a drink, and I insisted “just as friends”. Well one date turned into many others, and we realized that God had been weaving our paths together all along.

I was flying Jake down to meet my best friend Anna (my matron of honor) so that I could get the stamp of an approval before he would propose in the future. Little did I know that Jake had secretly gotten her number from someone else, and that he was planning to propose in North Carolina. Anytime I talked to Anna about coming to visit she told me how she wanted to go on a hike to this mountain, and she thought it would be fun to do it when Jake and I were visiting. I thought it was a great idea because we all love the outdoors, and I didn’t think anything of it. We packed everyone into the car on Saturday morning, and drove two hours to Pilot Mountain where Jake got down on one knee and asked me to marry him. Of course I said YES, in compete shock, as I had no idea this was happening.

Jake’s family lives in Oregon, and due to some life circumstances Jake’s parents would not have been able to make it to Pennsylvania for the wedding. We decided to do a small wedding out in Oregon with his parents and my parents. It was the sweetest most beautiful day we could have asked for, and we are so thankful to have those memories with both our parents.