Throughout engagement, I have been asked, “How did you meet your fiancé?” And honestly, I don’t remember the first time we met. Growing up, Max Dash was another kid in my neighborhood who attended the same elementary school as me, but I couldn’t even tell you if we had been in any of the same classes together. As we got older, in middle and high school, I knew he was nice and usually had a steady girlfriend, but that’s about the extent of it.

In 2015, the summer after our first year of college, Max and I volunteered at a summer camp for a month. We spent a lot of our time chatting while we were on lifeguard duty and cleaned the beach each morning. I like to think this is when we became real friends for the first time. I found out we liked the same TV shows, we thought the same things were funny, and we both deeply cared about having a meaningful relationship with Jesus.

Then, one day in February of 2017, Max reached out asking if I would go with him to a formal at the college he attended. At the time, I thought nothing of it. Max went to a small, all-boys college, and I really thought, “He needs a date and I am a familiar friend to bring along.” However, the night of the formal, he drove my car and dropped me off at a friend’s house to stay the night. The next morning, when I got in my car to leave, I noticed he had filled up my gas tank and cleaned out some trash I had left in my car. Taken aback, I immediately thought, “Does Max Dash like me?” And while I was genuinely perplexed, I can’t say I didn’t get excited at the thought.

Despite my frequent denial to friends and family that Max and I were anything more than just friends, in April of 2017, we decided to start dating. For the next three and a half years, we dated long-distance. Max worked and lived in Atlanta and then Connecticut, while I completed grad school and began teaching in the Richmond area. These years were filled with hours in a car, on planes, and on trains, each goodbye getting harder than before.

So, on September 7, 2020, Max asked me to marry him, and we decided to say yes to forever together. Needless to say, we are looking forward to no more long-distance!

One of my favorite things about my relationship with Max is that it is founded on a meaningful friendship. And I truly cannot wait to spend the rest of my life growing old with my best friend.

These usually start with the first time we met. I don’t remember the first time I met Alex because I was three. But I do remember when we first became friends because that didn’t happen until we were 19. It was the summer after our freshman year, and the two of us were spending the month of June working at a camp in the Adirondacks. One of the first mornings there, Alex and I were raking the sand on the beach and started talking to each other about Parks and Rec. We were fast friends, which is hilarious because it took us 16 years to have an actual conversation.

Over the next year, we would see each other at camp reunions or whenever we were both in Richmond. We always gravitated towards each other in group settings but were very much just friends. We would joke about dating, but I think it was so easy for us to joke about it because we both had absolutely zero interest in actually dating each other.

But over winter break junior year, I started to want to date Alex. I remember walking in the room on New Year’s Eve and making immediate eye contact with her. She patted the open seat next to her, so I sat down and we talked all night. We hung out the next day, and then a couple more times that week. I think I was making it pretty obvious that I was into her, but she couldn’t have been more oblivious.

When we both went back to school, I started watching The Bachelor just so I had an excuse to text her on Monday nights. I eventually invited her to H-SC to be my date at a winter formal, and that’s when she started to catch on. Not because I invited her to be my date at a formal—she made sure to tell every person she met that weekend that we were just friends—but because I cleaned out her car and filled it up with gas right before she drove back to JMU.

That gesture must have gone a long way because within a week she already made plans to drive back down to Farmville. I knew the ball was in my court at this point, but I didn’t shoot my shot for almost a month, until one night when she turned to me and said, “Hey, dude, what are we doing?”

For the next three years, we would date long-distance, either going to different schools or living in different states. Then on September 7th—at the same spot Alex and I hung out over winter break junior year—I asked Alex if she wanted to stop having to drive 500 miles to see each other, and now I get to marry my best friend.