About a year before we actually met, our friend Lex started casually trying to set us up. Will was intrigued by the idea of a girl who had hiked the Colorado Trail and loved being outdoors, but he wasn’t totally sure how he felt about the fact that she was vegan at the time. Paige was also intrigued, but slightly more cautious, mostly about Will being in the military and whatever red flags might come with that. So naturally, we did nothing about it and just followed each other on Instagram for an entire year. Fast forward to June 2022. Paige was on a planned post grad Europe trip with friends when Lex invited Will and her now husband to join part of the adventure. Paige told Lex that if Will really wanted to make a good impression, he would show up for a sunrise swim at the Sea Organ in Zadar, Croatia after getting off an overnight bus. Will accepted the challenge and took both an overnight flight and a 3am bus to be there. After a full year of buildup, we were both extremely nervous, said maybe three words to each other, and Will masked his awkwardness by doing backflips into the ocean. Very cool. Very subtle. The week that followed included travel, bonding, and a three hour bus ride where five people listened to us talk nonstop while quietly judging our compatibility. Paige was unfazed. Will was hyper aware of the audience, particularly after Paige asked him every question known to man. Somewhere in the middle of all this, Will also burned both of his eyeballs with contact solution and spent the week unsure if he actually knew what Paige looked like. Turns out it was love at first sound. One of our last nights ended with Paige daring Will to swim to a boat that was very much not ours and very much something we could have gotten in trouble for. Shortly after issuing the dare, Paige realized she did not have appropriate swimming attire and had to borrow clothes from a friend in an alley. It was absolutely worth it, and it became a foundational moment of our relationship. After the trip, Will slid into Paige’s DMs asking to steal another boat, and from there things became very real, very fast... just long distance. Paige went back to Arizona, started her first post grad job, and later moved to Phoenix. Will moved back from Italy and was stationed in Oklahoma. What followed was nearly three years of long distance that somehow felt less hard than expected. Together, we built a relationship that felt like constant adventure while also being the safest and most comfortable either of us had ever felt. Eventually, after years of airports, countdowns, and goodbyes, Paige moved to Enid and we finally got to stop doing long distance and start doing life together.