During the summer of 2014, I (Torri) went home to nanny for the summer and was living with my parents in Canonsburg, PA. While home, I decided to download a new dating app that everyone was talking about. The premise of the app was that if you came across a profile where you thought you would be interested in talking with the person, you would "swipe right" across the screen. I also made sure to set my matching radius to only 25 miles. One day, I got a notification that I matched with a boy named Eric. I decided to look at his profile a bit more and then Eric ended up messaging me. We hit it off right away and realized that we had a lot on common. We both loved country music, the outdoors, and Eric even lived on a farm with horses (which I was VERY excited about)! However, after talking for a few days, we both quickly realized that we did not live close to each other. In fact, it turned out that Eric lived in Ohio almost an hour and a half away from me. It turns out that I had been in Washington, PA one day and logged on to the app while Eric was only 20 miles away and he also logged on. We both decided to keep talking anyway and even decided to meet up in person. Having met online, we both agreed that we should bring a friend for our first meet and greet. So we each asked a friend and decided that we would meet at the Pittsburgh Zoo. We hit it off instantly, and the rest is history. We talked all summer and we would drive 45 minutes each way to a halfway point just to spend time together. This was also the summer that Eric introduced me to Jamboree in the Hills which quickly became one of our favorite summer activities. Even after I went back to college we never stopped talking. On September 5, 2015 we officially started dating, and we have been together ever since.
Eric and I decided to take a long weekend getaway to Hilton Head in January 2021. I had first taken Eric to Hilton Head a year prior, and this quickly became somewhere that we both loved. While there, we both had been waking up early enough each morning to watch the sunrise. So, on our last full day there, we both decided that we would wake up on Sunday morning and go down to the beach to watch the sunrise. Eric told me that he was going to bring his Nikon camera and use his phone to take a time-lapse of the sunrise. I agreed that this was a great idea and that we would get some pretty amazing pictures from it. That morning, we woke up bright and early and got ready to go down to the beach. Eric brought his camera and a small table to put his phone on and I bundled up for the cold. As we watched the sunrise Eric suggested that we stand in front of his phone, which was recording, so that we could later screenshot some photos from the video. Eric then told me that he wanted to take some photos of me, and he told me to stand still. After he took a few pictures, Eric said "Hey, Tor" and I turned around to him down on one knee. In shock, I instantly said "Stop!" and "Yes!" before he even asked me to marry him. I felt as though I was dreaming! Eric finally asked me to marry him, and we both just enjoyed the moment. There is even a part in the video where I asked him if I said "yes" because I honestly couldn't remember. We then spent the morning walking on the beach together and watching the rest of the most beautiful sunrise that we had on the entire trip.