We met in the fall/winter of 1982 when Andre was a sophomore and I was just a little freshie at Von Steuben High School in Chicago. We dated for a while during the summer of 1983 and that was it for me: I was smitten. Unfortunately, the timing just wasn’t right. We stayed friends even when I moved away the following year. In the summer of 1987, I moved back to Chicago, we reconnected and dated for a while. Again, the timing wasn’t right. We remained friends and kept in contact but went a very long time without seeing each other. In 2013, we finally got to see each other and that spark was still there but it still wasn’t time. For the next six years, we would hang out from time to time and he would send me little messages nearly every morning and/or night: Good morning beautiful or Good night sweetie. Finally following my heart, I let him out of the friend zone on June 24, 2019. And guess what? The time was right. Everything seems to have just fallen into place. Timing truly is everything!

He caught me completely by surprise! Although we talked about marriage, I truly was not expecting it that day. He told me his niece and her kids wanted to spend the weekend with us before they might be moving away. So on Sunday while his niece was cooking lunch, he asked me to go to the store with him to buy her some flowers. Little did I know this was just to get me out of the house and he had people staged in the parking lot across the street waiting to come in. When we returned less than 30 minutes later, our apartment was full of balloons and our friends and family. I was so surprised and didn’t understand what was happening. I turned around and he was down on one knee to propose. It was beautiful and I happily accepted! The following week we celebrated on a cruise that had been rescheduled five times since 2020. Again, timing is everything!