You don't expect to meet the love of your life listening to the band that soundtracked all of your high school breakups, but on November 20, 2015, Zach and his best friends happened to be standing behind Jena at a Mayday Parade show. Because Jena got lost driving to the venue and had anxiety about it, she bought a drink to calm her nerves, had a 21+ wristband which signaled her age. (If you know Jena, you know she rarely drink at shows.) She made some small talk with the guys behind her, Zach thought she was cute, and Michael made him ask for her number before they all left. Jena took his number to be polite thinking, "I live two hours away from here. If he's an axe murderer or generally creepy, I can just ghost him." Then left the next week to attend her family's annual Thanksmas. Zach texted her and asked if she'd like to meet halfway in Tyler for a date when she returned. Jena wondered what kind of guy puts in that kind of effort these days for a girl he met and spent three hours behind at a concert. She agreed to the date. They went out for bowling, dinner, and three hours of exchanging music in a random parking lot on December 5, 2015. Jena did not want to kiss Zach in a bowling alley parking lot when they went back to get her car, but then they had their first kiss by a Buc-ee's gas pump the very next weekend. The epitome of romance - beaver themed gasoline. They've spent few weekends apart since. December 20th, as Jena was driving out of Crandall, TX, Zach called her as she was leaving from another date. He had gotten nervous and didn't ask her out before she drove off. She said yes on the call, and he showed up at her house Christmas Eve weekend, to formally ask her to be his girlfriend with a ring pop. The next four and a half years were a "commuter relationship" filled with four hour round-trips drives on the weekends. There were more concerts than you can count across several genres, several New Year's Eves and lazy Sundays with waffles in a townhouse that Zach shared with his friends, attending all of their friends' weddings, and lots of family holidays and vacations. Somewhere in the middle of it all in September 2020, they moved in together in Longview and the pandemic years blurred together. The last almost eight years have included trips to all over Texas, California, Ohio, Pennsylvania, Oregon, Washington, and even Ireland chasing Jena's favorite band flor on tour. Zach proposed to Jena during flor's Future Shine VIP session in Portland, Oregon on October 21, 2022. It's hard to summarize eight years in 4,000 words and I'm trying to not max out that limit. I know attention spans are short. But the short of it is that Zach fell in love with the girl at the rock show and Jena had to spend some time making sure of what he and everyone else seemed to know along. But to know them is to know that Zach has always been go with the flow and Jena is a hardheaded, calculated planner. He was going to wait and she was going to figure it out. They got where they needed to be when they needed to be there and why rush the adventure of a life together when you're already enjoying the ride? "...and if you love me so, I'm gonna tell the whole world that it's the greatest thing that happened to me..." -Take This to Heart: Mayday Parade