We say we met in January 2023, but really, we had been almost meeting for 5 years—showing up in the same places like the annual entrepreneurs retreat Austin100, always just missing each other. Well, almost always. Years earlier, there had been one memorable encounter: David in a Mickey Mouse jacket, and Toba thinking, who let the Mickey Mouse guy into this? Until 2023. We gravitated toward one another like magnets. We felt like we had known each other our whole lives. Over the next two days, David followed Toba around the retreat (very subtly, he would say). But, Toba felt his stare on her the whole time. Other people noticed too, and later confided they had simply assumed we were already a couple. David told Toba he had never met anyone like her. He already knew he wanted her in his life. Sometimes that meant saying yes to her spontaneous adventures, like breaking into the alpaca pen at the retreat. Luckily, David would later say, it started raining mid-operation, so he grabbed her hand pulling her into a run for cover. Laughing, a little breathless, he told her he always carried bail money—just in case she needed it. Toba, for the record, is certain that if caught, she could have talked them out. By the end of Austin100, David asked if we could be best friends. Toba said yes. A week later. Toba invited David to Shabbat dinner. (David insists this was a date. Toba would like it formally noted that she felt bad for him.) The night ended with us kissing on Toba's hammock. Which was not a strong start to our “just friends” plan. We really did try. For a few months, we remained “just friends”… who couldn’t stop kissing. Eventually, we accepted reality and started dating. After dates, we never wanted the night to end, and would hang out by the car talking about everything and nothing. It became so consistent it earned a name: "parking lot time". David said he had read that you know you want to be with someone if you’re hoping you hit all the red lights on your way home so you get more time with them. But David took it a step further, often driving Toba around for extra hours late into the night just to delay saying goodbye. One night, during a classic "parking lot time", David gazed into Toba’s eyes, smiling sweetly with a matter of fact confidence, and said: “You’re in love with me.” …which, annoyingly, was correct. Technically, it was in July 2024, on a cruise in Alaska, when David first asked Toba to marry him. But immediately he said, “This doesn’t count, I need to do it properly with a ring.” He asked what she wanted, Toba sent him a picture of her dream stone. There was just one problem. The stone she wanted didn’t exist. For months, David searched. Jewelers were baffled. They couldn't find anything like it. Eventually, David asked:“Where did you even find it?” “Oh,” Toba said casually. “I designed it on AI.” Most people would have given up. But David was determined to make her vision a reality. After nearly a year of searching, he managed to source the perfect stone and design the most beautiful ring Toba had ever seen. But honestly, the proposal had been ongoing since Alaska, because ever since that trip David had been saying to Toba, multiple times a day: “I want you to be my wife.” When David finally proposed (with the ring!), he did it by tracing the question onto Toba’s arm while her eyes were closed, then asking her to tell him what he had written. "Will you marry me?" Toba asked? David said, actually, it's "you will marry me" with a knowing smile. Together, we created a blended family: David became best friends with Toba's cat and David's dog now follows Toba around. All the animals figured out how to coexist much faster than anyone expected. And just like that, “parking lot time” for the most part ended, because instead of more endless goodbyes, we just go home together, and will, for the rest of our lives.