It all started in the Spring of 2016 during Katie's sophomore year of undergrad at Washington & Lee University in Virginia and John's senior year of high school (John is old for his grade and Katie is young for hers, so it was justified) (Katie insisted on including this). John attended a scholarship candidate weekend at W&L. Katie was a tour guide and was sent on the weekend's last day to see if the prospective students had any lingering questions about the school before they left for home. She sat down at a random table in a large dining hall with the prospective students and gave her classic tour guide spiel about why they all should attend W&L. The group was overall pretty quiet, and they all stood up to leave and start heading out to catch their flights home as the weekend wrapped up. As they all stood up, Katie noticed one of the prospective students wearing a 'Passion' t-shirt -- a young adult Christian conference Katie had been talking to friends about earlier that week. She went up to him and asked "Is that t-shirt from Passion conference?" And so began a 15-minute-long speed conversation (John had to catch his flight back to Nashville) about faith, college, life, music, etc. At the end of this conversation, John asked Katie for her number to 'hear more about life in college.' Unbeknownst to Katie... John left this weekend and told his family back home that 'he was not going to go to W&L for college, but that he had found his future wife'. John eventually ended up deciding to attend MIT in Boston, and then followed a year and a half of entirely platonic phone calls about life + college updates, prayer requests, and so many music recs ('music friend John' became widely known by Katie's friends this year). In the summer of 2017, John bought a flight with two friends (Hudson and Hunter) to 'visit' his freshman MIT roommate, Will, who was at his home in San Diego that summer. Katie was coincidentally doing a summer of scientific research at UC San Diego and was living there that summer... which meant that a trip to see Will presented an incredible (and very intentional) opportunity to get together with Katie again. On that San Diego trip, John and Katie hung out for the first time in person since their 15-minute conversation a year and a half before. That week in San Diego with Hudson, Will, and Hunter (Will and Hunter also eventually started dating after this trip and are now married!!) included a living art show, a Padres game (that Katie and John missed because they talked outside the stadium for 4 hours), and a beach walk where Katie and John talked through options of what a dating life together could look like. And so began 3 1/2 years of long-distance dating... phone calls, FaceTimes, trips to see the other (except for the first 4 months of dating -- yikes to football + volleyball season coinciding). When it came time to choose a grad school that fall after Katie and John started dating, Katie chose Vanderbilt to be back in Nashville, with the hopes that John could end up there too post-graduation. The new distance became Nashville -> Boston for the next two years. In the spring of John's senior year at MIT, COVID hit. This sent him back home to Nashville to finish his degree, graduate virtually, and start a remote-only job. The pandemic world of isolation, quiet, and shut-down was anything but normal for John and Katie to start their first time dating in the same city. Those two years of the pandemic would become the toughest, most painful, strengthening time for Katie and John. Through innumerable tears, deep internal reflection, and the most challenging of conversations, Katie and John came out the other side with a love for each other deeper than they could have imagined. In December of 2022, John surprised Katie while she was on a family beach walk in California, and asked her to marry him. So begins this beautiful new journey together!