When prompted with this question, Wyatt and Marilyn usually share a few anecdotes: they crossed paths in the hallways during their time at the same K-12 school and at various parties in Lawrence, KS, where Wyatt's brother Andy and Marilyn both attended undergrad. However, they typically settle on the story of the USD Twin Valley school bus, where both Wyatt and Marilyn caught the bus at the county line straddling Saline and Ottawa Counties, sometime around 1999. It wasn't until a decade later that their friendship began to take root. Over the years, they cultivated a camaraderie grounded in a shared love of music, quirky senses of humor, and a reverence for their rural upbringings. Eventually, their friendship deepened. Somewhere along the way, they found themselves texting daily to bridge the distance between Wyatt’s home in Colorado and Marilyn’s in New York. Holiday trips back to Kansas became well-coordinated, ensuring ample time to cruise the dirt roads winding around the Solomon River, listening to music and meandering through endless conversations until sunrise. Finally, in the early hours of the Fourth of July in 2017, while sitting on a hay bale in the field adjacent to Marilyn’s grandparents’ home, they acknowledged the reality that could no longer be ignored: they weren’t just friends after all. Six years after that moment, Wyatt proposed on the bridge over the Solomon River, a stone’s throw away from that aforementioned bale of hay.