Our love story began freshman year of college. As new members of the CU swim team we were treated to a freshman welcome party. As a silly, young college freshman my single goal was to talk with the most attractive boy there. With my mission in mind, I showed up and immediately spotted Maxim. With all the courage in the world, I walked right up to him and introduced myself. We spent the whole night hanging out and talking football. And how lucky was I, he also lived in my dorm. I spent the whole next morning gushing to my girl friends about this cute boy I had met… mission accomplished!

Now after that night we stayed friends, but each went our own ways. As the year went on my crush on the smart, popular boy on the swim team continued to grow. It wasn’t until the following summer when we both stayed in Boulder for summer class that our relationship began to blossom.

Over the summer we spent each day with each other. Whether it was “studying” for our exams or driving Maxim on all his errands, we became inseparable. We made it official after taking our final exam and shamelessly finished a bottle of Smirnoff vodka together (The bottle still sits in our living room to this day…). Lying on the roof, staring at the stars, it was at this moment that we decided to make our relationship official.

Since July 6th, 2018, the rest has been history. Together our love has grown through a global pandemic, years of schooling, and even three years of long distance. We have always prioritized our common love for music, the outdoors, and sports. Over the years we have grown-up together and supported each other as we have become healthcare providers and dog parents. These past 6 years are just the beginning to our story. With all the memories we have already created together, I am confident there will never be a dull moment to come.

Our love story started just like Alex said, meeting up in a parking lot before the first swim team party of the year. I remember being excited, nervous, and having a half empty bottle of Fireball in my backpack. I was socializing with my newfound friends and Alex seemed to appear out of thin air, introducing herself to me with a gorgeous smile and piercing green eyes. After snapping out of my trance, we quickly got on the topic of football, and I immediately felt a spark with this woman. We hung out the whole night, and our first ever photo came out of that party. Unfortunately, our romantic paths were not meant to fully cross at that point in time. This was probably for the best, Freshman Maxim needed a year to get all his partying and irresponsible behavior out of the way.



Since she was dating someone else at the time, I was very respectful and kept my distance. However, there wasn’t a day that went by without me thinking about this special woman. During a swim meet at CSU in the spring of 2018, I remember being stopped on the wall while warming up. Alex stopped with me, and we struck up a conversation. I asked her how her relationship was going, and she told me that they had unfortunately broken up. As shameful as I am to admit, I felt a little bit of excitement hearing the news. I’m also pretty sure I kicked ass at the meet, which was directly correlated with wanting to show off for her.



From that moment all the way through our anatomy class during Summer 2018, we spent almost every moment together. I remember being consistently late to that class, because apparently 12:45 pm was too early for me to wake up on time at that point in my life. The professor would always walk by Alex with packets of information for the class and ask “is he coming in today?”. Alex would always say yes, take double the class material, and save my lazy butt. After finishing the final exam for the class, in classic college fashion, we split a fifth of vodka and finally expressed our true love for each other. That empty bottle still sits in our living room, labeled “Malex” (couple names were cool back then). From that day forward, I’ve been able to continuously love this special woman and explore life together.



Even though Alex thinks that before we started dating that she was way more into me than I was into her, she just didn’t know that this was truly the first time I pictured life with someone. I took my time, and that was because I was so scared to make a mistake and lose the person who I was convinced would be my forever. From the first time I said that I loved Alex in front of the middle school who’s roof we used to climb, to three years of long distance, to when we got engaged in freezing wind in front of the flatirons, to our soon to be wedding, Alex and I have been through it all. Behind every great man, is an even greater woman, and I can’t wait to make it official with all of our special guests!