Steph says: Just like our grandparents before us, we connected through an app. Robert mentioned one of his interests as scratching cat's bellies, so I reached out to say he was a brave man to do so - he responded that it was not as brave as admitting to the internet that I had never watched Star Wars. After weeks filled with snow shoeing, getting drinks and eating food, and winning a couple times at bar trivia, he went Rogue One and discovered that scratching my cats' bellies would lead to an Attack of the Clones. Time passed, and we decided we didn't want to end up Solo... and the rest, as they say, is a New Hope. That's as far as I can go with Star Wars titles because I've (still) never seen any of them... but luckily he still wants to marry me.

Robert says: I think often of a man that I have never met. Steph and I were snowshoeing in 56 degree weather in January 2018 (climate change is real!) on our third date, and we went out for chicken wings after that. Steph likely remembers this as the date where I said that Bernie Sanders had an insidious impact on the trajectory of the 2016 presidential campaign, but I remember it as being the day that Ken Bragg was introduced to me. Ken had passed away 8 months prior to Steph and I starting to date due to an unfortunate combination of long term health issues - but I feel his presence often as a spirit who lives on in the positive impact he left on the people that he encountered and loved, and also due to some of the individual hobbies and quirks that we apparently share. I knew that as things progressed in our relationship that I wanted to find a way to incorporate him into events that he would never get to see - and as a proposal became more imminent - I saw that as my best opportunity to do that. Ken had a bench dedicated to his memory by his friends and family in Dedham Center directly in front of the coffee shop that he frequented. On a sunny Saturday in June, I got Steph to go out to lunch with me at a newly opened diner across the street from the bench. Going to a local bike shop after we ate lunch (I was trying to have as many reasons as possible to be in Dedham Center!), I asked Steph if she wanted to 'visit her dad' - and we went to the bench. After a few minutes on the bench, in front of a full coffee shop of people on a busy street corner, Steph wanted to leave because the wind kept blowing her dress up - and flashing that group of people on her dad's bench wasn't how to spend the afternoon. I got down on one knee then and there. No script, no plan, just a ring, a vision, a serendipitous bystander who acted as a photographer, and the presence of Ken Bragg all around us.