It's hard to pin down exactly how we met. My earliest memory of John is of him hobbling home from our middle school bus stop on crutches. I also have a distinct memory of John dancing his face off to Sandstorm by Darude at my sweet sixteen years later. Little did I know how that moment would foreshadow our future of many nights spent dancing together. Flash forward to the summer of 2014. John and I were coincidentally both back on Long Island at the same time and a friend invites me to a party at Robin's house (Robin is one of John's best friends and groomsmen). I hadn't seen most of my classmates in years so I figured why not. Like I said before, it's hard to really remember the first time I met John. But that party was the first time it counted. I was fresh off a month long hiking trip, John was working at a wilderness treatment center and we felt like the only two people on Long Island who were totally energized by our time in the outdoors. We sat and talked while he rolled his American Spirit tobacco into cigarettes, and I rolled my eyes as he flirted. Then he went back to North Carolina, I went back to Buffalo, and we never spoke again. Well not for another year at least. The next summer John and I found ourselves back on Long Island, this time indefinitely. We ultimately reconnected through Tinder - another dating app success! It wasn’t until John invited me to his Halloween party that we actually started dating. He was Patrick Bateman, I was some type of sexy feline and here we are 7 years later. To continue with my part of the story, John here, Melissa & I bonded early on in a hunger to change our situations. She was grinding it out as a server & I was discovering.. what is sales? Getting hung up on hundred of times a day. After a few key early dates including walks to New Park Pizza with a Lagunitas filled Nalgene, discovering clubbing at Output & a fateful Freddie Gibbs show.. We had to make it official. At our first apartment in Maspeth we survived on a steady diet of Bloody Mary’s & anything that could be made in the Instant Pot. Wanting to move to the city to eat our way through Manhattan & upgrade from Slide BBQ to Union Square Cafe, we quickly moved on up to the Upper East Side. There we solidified ourselves in our careers. Me, learning the worlds of biz dev. Melissa, higher end dining, finer points of wine I love benefitting from, boutique hospitality & b2c sales. All this time we’re on different schedules having just a few hot date nights a week with late nights for her & early mornings for me. Luckily our new favorite hobby of electronic music was able to fit nicely into our schedules, giving us long nights to connect even deeper. A few more key trips to places like New Orleans, Amsterdam & Berlin + festivals like Bonnaroo, Gov Ball & Gather, built memories that solidified this path was going amazing. We were researching the secret sauce of life. About a hundred hours in Uber rides across the bridge we realized it was time to get closer to where we wanted to be, this little place called Bushwick, exploding with culture, creativity & birria tacos. This was where we were seeing an opportunity to get into something on the come up in the city & be a part of contributing to that scene. Then the pandemic happened. Brought some pivots along with it, bringing Melissa into the world of tech.. us both working from home. Finally the same schedule. Not only the same schedule, but same office. Not only same office, we were working from the same table across from each other. The same table that’s in our apartment to this day. This could’ve been a major test but we made it work seamlessly. Work by day, call of duty & fermenting by night. June 10 2021 John popped the question on pier 15 after months of nervous / excited deliberation of what to do. Thankfully Melissa agreed & we’ve been riding the high ever since. The best times have been with each other & all of you back out In the world living life.