On May 2, 2018, a Maroon Friday, Patrick Sharp, wearing his Mississippi State t-shirt, boarded Southwest Flight 270 on his way to his sister's MSU graduation. Patrick, as usual, put off checking in until he was left at the end of “B Group.” He couldn’t believe his luck when he spotted an aisle seat. He buckled in and the woman in the middle seat asked him, “Did you go to Mississippi State?” Patrick said no and described his position in the Army and a small school in New York. Then the other passenger asked a question. “Did you go to West Point?” Alison said as she poked her head from behind her mother, beginning a flight-long conversation. A wide range of topics saw the chemistry between Alison and Patrick grow and as the journey came to an end, Lou Hovatter saw her opportunity. “Maybe you two should be Instagram buddies or something?” Patrick tried to alleviate his own awkwardness. “I don’t know Ms. Lou, our schools don’t really line up,” he said with a nervous laugh. Before she could respond, a gentlemen standing in the aisle interjected. “You know, my wife is a Vanderbilt lady and I’m UT Knoxville and we’ve made it work for 35 years!” Taken aback by the response, the trio couldn’t respond before another voice came from across the aisle. “I was just telling my wife, y’all have been talking for an hour and a half. You have some real chemistry.” The gentleman’s wife poked her head out from the middle seat. “Can you believe I met him at a bus stop 20 years ago?!” Alison and Patrick sat dumbstruck. The scene was straight out of Hallmark. Another voice from the row behind them came through, belonging to a face pushed through the seats, “Oh my gosh, this is the cutest thing ever! Please invite me to the wedding!” The moment was too perfect. After an awkward exchange of contact information and a direct message on Instagram, fate had cemented Patrick’s and Alison’s life together. The rest, as they say, is history.