Sam's Perspective: A long time ago on a peninsula far, far away, I was a young lost lieutenant arriving to his first duty station. It was 2018 and chaos reigned supreme in the DGS intel squadron I was part of. Trying to do what all good LTs are told to do, I sought mentorship from my experienced NCOs. "Yeah I can't really help you LT. We had this awesome girl named Starbuck who used to work here. Just be more like her and you'll be fine" was the story I kept hearing. The longer I was in Korea, the more the mythos of this "Starbuck" grew: Singlehandedly kicked a full-bird Colonel off the ops floor. Beloved by the squadron commander. Raged with fighter pilots and played in rock bands. And of course, as a huge Battlestar Galactica nerd, she had the best callsign I'd ever heard. I knew I had to meet this woman. Fast forward to 2020. I was finally getting settled into my first job with the Space Force. I was still getting to know some of our partner organizations, so when my unit's weapons officer offered the opportunity to do a meet-and-greet, I jumped on it. As we were heading to the conference room, she mentioned that the weapons officer from the other unit named Starbuck would be attending. "THE Starbuck?!" I was immediately starstruck. We both started chatting at the meeting and I felt like I had met my celebrity crush. We started working more closely together and my celebrity crush very quickly turned into a real one. We began hanging out outside of work and I became more and more smitten. Thinking that I was being *extremely* flirty, after a few times hanging out together I decided to put my arm around her while watching a movie. "Wait a second... do you LIKE me?!" was her reaction. We ended up talking for several hours about beliefs, relationships, life goals etc. and decided to call our upcoming ski trip a date. After a week of skiing our faces off, deep conversations, football rage (mostly on her part), and highly improvised Thanksgiving dinners, I was head-over-heels for this legend turned reality. Over the next year, we grew closer and closer together, talking about faith, our future, finances, and more, and I knew she was the one. Katie's Perspective: I was SO over dating and boys. After being thoroughly disappointed with the Colorado Springs dating scene as well as turning 30 and feeling it was time to turn over a new page in my life, I decided it would take someone truly special to get me back in the dating scene. In addition to that, showing up to Colorado in the middle of September 2020 meant it was extremely difficult for me to make friends. A month or two into my assignment, one of my weapons officer peers asked me to come down and talk to intel folks in her unit. While I was discussing my unit's mission with them, I was shocked to learn one of the intel officers there just came from Korea where I was stationed for two years. Finally, a cool Captain-type like me! He was also interested in "spinning up" for the USAF Weapons School and we started to work together to help him get ready. We started hanging out more and more outside of work, but again...in my mind...we were just friends! This went on for several months until one day we were watching a TV show on his couch and he put his arm around me. All of a sudden, a light bulb went off in my head; he'd been trying to flirt with me for weeks and I was just clueless. Classic. Lucky for me, he found a way to get through and break out of the "friend zone" I'd put him in. Our relationship grew from a "maybe someday" engagement to a "soon" to a "when" over the course of a whirlwind year of Colorado mountain magic and Air/Space Force travel adventures. Every day with Sam is a new adventure of joy, peace, and love. He's the man I can cry with, be a complete goober with, pray and worship God with, and I can't wait until we can commit before the Lord and our loved ones to grow together for the rest of our lives.