Like all great love stories, ours begins with a debate. To this day, Sam and Maddie cannot agree on when they actually met — a detail you’d think would be fairly straightforward, but here we are. Sam’s version: We met freshman year in second period, where he spent months staring at Maddie, waiting for the perfect moment to get her attention — a moment that apparently did not arrive for… quite a while. He’s confident this is true. No one else remembers this, but he is confident. Maddie’s version: She had no idea who Sam was freshman year. None. According to her, the real beginning was sophomore year at the Back to School Cats event, when she walked into the 800 building and spotted a glowing, overly-tanned, six-foot-tall boy with flowy Justin Bieber hair holding court at the end of the hall. That, she insists, was their first encounter. What is confirmed: we landed in the same first-period AP European History class. Maddie made the first move (she will happily remind you of this) via Facebook chat asking for homework help — which turned into long chats, long texts, and even longer phone calls over the next three years (despite Mama Lak's 10pm phone cut off). Sam loved Maddie’s stubborn spark (and the fact that she would argue with him about literally anything). Maddie loved that Sam texted in full sentences with zero abbreviations, a true miracle for a teenage boy in the early 2010's. And Sam was hooked from the moment Maddie refused to make him cookies. She kept him on his toes then, and she still does. So whether our story started in freshman year (Sam’s fantasy universe) or sophomore year (Maddie’s documented reality), we’re grateful it started at all — hallway glow, Bieber hair, AP Euro, Facebook chats and all.

If there’s one thing everyone knows about Sam and Maddie, it’s this: these two were determined to end up together, no matter how long it took. After years of “almosts,” “not-yets,” and “you two are still talking?”, Sam and Maddie finally made it official in December of their senior year of high school. And from the very beginning, their relationship was built on choosing what was best for each other, not just what was easiest. College took them in opposite directions — kicking off six years of long distance that would have sent most teenagers running. Instead, it made them stronger. Maddie threw herself into school to become one of the top students at her university, while working multiple jobs to afford flights to see Sam. Sam pushed himself to become the strongest teammate and competitor on his rowing team, all while building the kind of communication skills that somehow made a long-distance relationship feel close. Then came another crossroads: graduation. After four years apart, it would have been easy to pick the same city just to finally be together. But once again, they chose to put each other’s futures first. So they spent two more years building their careers — still long distance, still choosing love through effort, patience, and a frankly heroic number of phone calls. Finally, in February of 2019, Maddie & Sam loaded up a 12-foot U-Haul in Atlanta and drove it to Philadelphia. That tiny apartment became the place where they learned what they’d always known: that the wait was worth it, that they were better as teammates than they ever were alone, and that a love built on years of choosing each other — even from afar — is the kind that lasts. Today, they’re best friends, true partners, and extremely grateful that long-distance relationships don’t last forever. Only the love does.