The very first time I met Tucker, we were passing by each other on the sidewalk. We lived in the same apartment complex and happened to cross paths walking to and from classes. He was walking with Sam Lucas, who was dating my friend Brianna Harrell. They stopped to say hey. Tucker recognized me from our statistics class that we had together that semester. To be honest, I didn’t recognize him at all. I vaguely remember him commenting on my eyes, but I was too distracted by the fact that he was missing a tooth, right at the front of his big goofy smile. He reintroduced himself to me, but I thought he said his name was Taylor. After that, we began to bump into one another on our walks more often. One time, I heard someone running behind me and turned around to see him trying to catch up with me. I later found out that, another time, he saw me walking a ways behind him and purposefully walked extremely slow so that I would eventually catch up to him. How slick.

For about a month, Tucker had been coming over to my apartment often to hang out with me and my roommate, Deanna. On October 24, the three of us were hanging out talking. I was organizing my planner for the week, so I left it on the table. Tucker picked it up and started writing in it, and I didn't think much of it. To be honest, I just expected him to draw weird pictures in random places - which he did. Right before he left, I picked it up to see what he wrote, and I flipped to the week of November 1, 2016, where he had written "Possible coffee date with Tuck Daddy at 929 before Priority?" He had intended that I not see it until later, but I flipped right to it. I immediately felt so awkward, and all that came out was "Aw." He took that as me not knowing how to say no. So, he got up and started to leave. Once the door closed, Deanna asked me what had just happened and when I told her that he asked me on a date, she shoved me out the door and told me to go after him. So, from the top of my apartment building's staircase, I yelled "Pick me up at seven!" And he yelled, "Aight!" So on October 25, 2016, we went out on a date to a coffee shop in Starkville. We intended to go to Priority, a BSU event that night, but we got to talking for so long that we ended up missing it. We shared our testimonies with each other, and were very upfront with one another. It wasn't weird for either one of us to be talking about marriage already on the first date. We both agreed that we had seen godly qualities in each other and could see us marrying one another in the future. Had we not seen marriage as an option, we wouldn't have continued dating. As we got lost in conversation and laughter, we failed to notice that people had started setting up for an event around us. A high school poetry slam event began, and we were sitting almost in the middle of the room. We both could not stop laughing about the whole situation, and stayed long enough to where we could discretely leave.

Once Christmas had passed, I began to become suspicious of when Tucker might propose. We had talked about marriage plenty of times and agreed that we would be married sometime after graduation. He and his family invited me to spend New Year's with them in Tupelo. Tucker knew that New Year's is my favorite holiday. He told me to bring something nice, because he wanted to take me out to a nice dinner before we shot off fireworks at his house. I had assumed that if he was going to propose, it would be at dinner. So I was really expecting it the whole time we were eating, and I was anxiously waiting for him to ask. We laughed and had a great time together, as always, but I looked at the clock and realized we would have to be leaving soon. I started to give up hope that he might propose. So, I stopped anticipating a proposal - which was the best thing that could happen. We got back to his house, and I was ready to go inside to change into some comfy clothes and use the bathroom. I was so focused on being able to get out of my heels that I wasn't paying attention to the fact that the backyard was all lit up. Tucker insisted that we go see what the lights were, and I kept trying to go inside to change, but he told me that his family would want to see us dressed up first. Reluctantly, I started walking to the backyard. All along the back porch were Christmas lights and candles. At first, I thought they were just left over Christmas decorations, so I thought nothing of it. But then I saw a stand with the letters "A&T" set up. It all began to click in my mind when I realized the lights were in the shape of a heart. I immediately started crying. He walked me through a picture journey of our favorite memories before reminding me of a past conversation we had the summer before, where he had told me that he was beginning to see me not as someone he COULD marry, but someone that he WOULD marry. And with that, he got down on one knee and asked me to be his wife!!