I met David a few weeks after I started my first "big girl" job at Maxim. He transferred to Knoxville from another office in NC and I remember thinking "Man, this guy is loud (and cute)!". It didn't take long to realize our mutual love for tacos, margaritas, and anything competitive. Through this a wonderful friendship was born! Fast forward to a year later when I lived 8 hours away and we started dating. Despite the distance, we only grew closer and fonder of each other. We spent many hours traveling back and forth between PA and TN. Every minute was worth it but the goodbyes only got harder and harder. I'll never forget our trip to Toronto, when I knew without a doubt that I would marry him. We grabbed wings from a pub and a bottle of wine from a store where David conned the cashier into uncorking the bottle for us to go. We found a spot on the rocks at the Scarborough Bluffs overlooking Lake Ontario and dug in. It was in that moment I realized I was having more fun eating cold wings with red wine (ew) on the ground than I ever had with anyone doing anything else. It truly was one of those aha moments.

After two wonderful years, David proposed on a road trip to the Ozarks. I was so excited for this trip because I had secretly planned a virtual cooking class with a chef in Italy for one of the nights during our trip. David had always wanted to make pasta noodles from scratch so I bought everything we needed and planned it out. A few nights before I couldn't help but to spill my plan after boasting about what an awesome surprise I had for him. He told me he also had a surprise but of course everything is a competition so I insisted that my surprise was better than his. (It definitely wasn't) On the way to the Ozarks we stopped in St. Louis, Missouri for the weekend where we planned to visit the arch at Gateway Arch National Park. After a fun lunch filled with our favorite - tacos and margaritas, we walked to the park while I relentlessly tried guessing the surprise. We stopped under the arch for a quick photo op where David totally shocked me by proposing! I'll never forget that feeling of complete surprise and happiness.