Ryan and Shauna have been in proximity since Ryan moved to GA 14 years ago. They had many of the same friends, went to the same church and participated in the same bible study but never met each other. They both feel like God purposely blinded them to one another until His perfect timing. At the beginning of 2017 Shauna felt led to fast and pray about areas in her life that she desired breakthrough in. One of those was marriage. She wanted a Godly man who was chasing after God's heart and had a desire to serve others. She prayed that God would bring her "'Boaz" (book of Ruth) and they would recognize each other quickly. Ryan had also been praying about his future spouse and refused to lower his standards as well. Ryan does a guest appearance on Victory 91.5 for a radio program called "Underground Revival" with his best friend. Well, back in August his friend started calling him "Boaz" on the air and asking for His Ruth to come find him. Ryan eventually signed up for Christian Mingle just to give it a try, but was honestly unimpressed with the site and the options because most of them were hundreds of miles away, so he lost interest after a couple months. At the beginning of November Shauna decided to create a profile on Christian Mingle, but felt the same way about how far away people were, so she wasn't very hopeful. The website has an app that you can download on your phone, but the instructions were not clear. at the bottom of each profile was a smiley face button and a heart button, Shauna thought the smiley face bookmarked the profile, she did not realize until hours later that she had been sending smiley faces. On Nov 13th, Ryan logged on to shut down his profile because his membership was over, but he noticed he had a smiley face from a local Clarkesville girl, so in a last ditch effort he sent her his real name and Facebook and contact info. They started talking on Nov 14th, and met face to face on Nov 17th. They have been inseparable ever since.

Both Ryan and Shauna felt like they knew early on that God was up to something big. Shauna remembers thinking 2 weeks in after a spontaneous full moon hike to her favorite waterfall that this was a man she could see herself marrying. Ryan started feeling the same way around the same time, so he started looking for a ring. He had previously told Shauna that he was not good at keeping secrets because he got so excited about blessing others with gifts. He bought a ring on Dec 11th and had the intention of planning something special. On December 12th Shauna wasn't feeling well and stayed home from work, so Ryan came over that night and brought dinner. They had been watching a movie and after the movie was over they were just talking about the future and how excited both were that God had brought them together and how they were both excited to see what the future holds. Ryan then got up to get some water, but when he came back to the living room he knelt down beside the couch. Shauna was very confused about what he was doing, then he asked her if she would be his wife. Shauna said yes, but still didn't realize this was an official proposal, then Ryan pulled out the ring and it fit perfectly on her finger. Shauna was in shock, not because she didn't know what to say but because she wasn't expecting it. Ryan asked if she liked the ring and she had to laugh because it was to dark to see, so he got up and turned on the light, then He came back and explained why he had chosen that ring. He said the middle stone represented God being at the center of our lives and the 2 stones on the side represented us. He said the ring still had value without the center stone, but it wouldn't be as pretty to show off and he wanted our lives and story to be something that brought God glory. A little later Shauna made a joke about how Ryan could have waited until she felt better, but he responded that he loved her regardless of how she looked or felt. This only made her love him even more.