We met shortly after I moved to South Carolina in 2017. Bryan knew he met the one when I mispronounced McIlwee on the first try and said that the worst drivers were from Virginia! We both worked for municipalities in the Lowcountry area and ran into one another frequently. We remained close friends for years until 2020 when I received a job offer that moved me out to Colorado. It was a hard decision to leave Bryan and the friends I had made in Hilton Head and Bluffton, but I felt like something was pulling me to move out West. Bryan and I stayed friends and kept in contact for a period while I lived in Colorado. I never thought I would be telling “Our Story” and mentioning a global pandemic, but here it goes. Sometime in June of 2021, in the “middle” of the pandemic, after a lot of consideration, I made a trip back to South Carolina to put my condo that I still owned on the market. It had offers before I even landed in Charleston! I think that was the point where Bryan felt like our connection to each other was ultimately going to come to an end unless he did something about it.

About a year later from when I first moved to Colorado, someone we both knew and who was important to both of us from Hilton Head passed away unexpectedly at a very young age. Although it was terribly sad, his mutual loss was the catalyst that connected us back together. We decided that life is too short and when you feel a certain way for someone you can’t ignore it. Bryan was still in South Carolina at the time, but he made the decision to begin looking for jobs in the Colorado area. A few months later, in late 2021, he found a job. I flew out to meet him, and we drove his truck and a U-Haul from South Carolina all the way to Parker, Colorado. It’s only a 25-hour car ride if you are interested in making the trip one day! Missouri is not that great.

We spent almost a year and a half in Colorado together exploring and hiking in Rocky Mountain National Park, dodging coyotes while camping in Wyoming, attending Rockies baseball games, Red Rocks concerts, Avalanche hockey games, eating the best smoked wings we’ve ever had in Nederland, skiing Vail and Breckenridge and so so so much more! We still have a huge place in our hearts for Colorado and will continue to visit, but we couldn’t be happier with being back closer to the community that we grew to love and the people that we call home in South Carolina. And I don’t want to move again for at least another 10 years!