Let's celebrate!

Mariah doesn’t actually remember meeting Nate for the first time. It was the end of her freshman year and his sophomore year at UD. They had both recently been accepted into the University of Dayton Rescue Squad and must have seen each other at the first new member meeting. She does remember him from various rescue squad shifts, nights out, and classes throughout the next two years. They were friendly but never close. Fast forward to two years later, Nate and Mariah were both applying for the physician assistant program at UD and they ended up interviewing on the same day and even ended up in the same trio for the group interview. Eight months later they started PA school. It took a semester before Mariah noticed Nate flirting with her. She shared her suspicion with her best friend Sarah and they quickly formed a plan to get him to a birthday party for a mutual friend. Sarah paid attention that night and confirmed that she too thought Nate was interested in Mariah. A few days later they decided to hang out. They spent the evening watching The Office and talking. Finally a few weeks later Nate asked Mariah on their first date. He took her to Brio because even then he knew she loved pasta. They quickly became inseparable. The rest is history.

Mariah and Nate first met while training to become EMTs during undergrad at UD. They did not start dating at this time, nor would he classify the two of them as "good friends". Nate was a year older than she was and did not seem to fit into the same group of friends like she did during their training program, partially because most of the classmates were her year. It's been a long time since this training class, but his strongest memories of her from this time are related to being impressed with how organized and prepared she always was. Fast forward to interviews for PA school, Nate shows up (late of course) to the Dayton interview and runs into a face he hasn’t seen in two years- Mariah. Of course, during a small group portion of the interview, Mariah and Nate were selected to compete in the same trio; Nate, Mariah, and another girl who did not make it into the program. The objective of this small group interview was to choose one person out of the three who most deserves to be accepted into the program. Nate, like any good future husband would, chose Mariah to win (it was an easy choice, she deserved it). Mariah, however, decided the other girl she did not know (whom, in her defense had another Master's degree in anatomy and was much more qualified than Nate) deserved to be selected into the program. Some future wife. Fortunately, they both were selected to be in Dayton's program. According to Mariah, it took about 5 months for her to take interest in Nate (yeah right), then one good friend's birthday party to get them intoxicated together, and lastly a gentle push from another friend to finally kindle that fire. And they both lived happily ever after