Our moms were best friends in high school who lost touch until the "greatest" invention: Facebook. Quickly, Beth and Liska reignited their friendship, and from some prodding from former classmates, introduced us to each other on July 11, 2018. The story goes like this: we met in the driveway of my childhood home and were sardined next to each other in the back of my car on a 3-hour car ride to Cleveland for a baseball game. Gotta hand it to Connor's friend and roommate, Clay, for breaking a lot of tension (and ensuring that we sat very close to each other). Through the meddling of our mothers, we got each other's phone numbers and started chatting each other up. Our first "hangout" was a 7 hour Game of Thrones marathon. Lovingly called a hangout because it's really funny to say our first date was at a Bed, Bath, and Beyond. I always say that I was dating Connor for his BBB discount to get cool stuff for my college dorm; the truth is that the date was perfect and our conversation was effortless. I knew I was going to be in love with him and a few days later we made it official.

Since the day we met, I had a feeling that Lauren was gonna be really special, so I saved the ticket from the Indians game we went to. As we dated and did more and more fun things, I made sure to save anything I could: tickets, flyers, anything related to the date; and I always made sure to take a picture. Come November I knew the time was right, so I made a scrapbook of all of our times together, using all the things I saved. She and I went to Mirror Lake on Ohio State's campus under the guise of doing homework, sat on a bench overlooking the lake, and I gave her the scrapbook. On the very last page, there was one picture of our time at Rising Park, the first of my favorite days with her, and a blank space. I told her the page was for the days of my life that made me the absolute happiest and asked if she'd help me finish the scrapbook that day. I then got down on one knee and asked her to marry me. Her best friend Aastha was hiding in the bushes to take pictures to capture the moment, and we completed the scrapbook later that night.