Boise Idaho Circa 2008:

Andrew arrives at BK as a freshman and Ali is going into her sophomore year. Over the next three years, they'll encounter each other through sports and will cross paths a few times, but they won't truly get to know one another.

The real reason for the lack of interaction was that despite Andrew being a basketball star, he was secretly terrified of 13 time State Champion/Cool girl Ali Eisenbeiss.

After High School, Ali went off to undergrad at the University of Utah (where she would continue going to school for the next 13 years and counting), while Andrew attended the College of Idaho, moved to California, and then back to Boise. During these years he would occasionally see Ali's posts on social media or hear her name through mutual friends, but had not talked to Ali since 2011.

Long story short, nobody would've guessed where this would end up.

Fast forward to April of 2023, Ali had moved back to Boise and was nearing the end of her one year Internal Medicine Internship. Andrew is back in Boise working at The College of Idaho.

Both Andrew and Ali are on Hinge and match with each other. When they match, Andrew thinks they will have a nice reunion chat about old times and tell stories about what has happened in their lives over the last 10 plus years.

Ali opened with the line... "Wait, you look really familiar. Do I know you?" to which Andrew replied, "Ali, we literally went to the same small high school together for three years."

Despite all those years of high school, middle school dances, and overlapping friends and sports, Ali barely remembered Andrew.

This didn't exactly build Andrew's confidence to ask Ali out on a date, but he had come a long way since being terrified of 13 time state champ/cool girl Ali Eisenbeiss. He was now only slightly afraid of 13 time state champ/cool girl/engineer/ FREAKIN DOCTOR! (That's a lie, he was still terrified).

But despite all of that Andrew asked Ali out and she agreed!

Ali and Andrew decided to keep it simple on the first date, taking Oscar Tomas on a very cold walk on the Boise Greenbelt. That planned short walk turned into a two hour, five mile walk that lasted well after the sun went down. It went about as good as either of them could've hoped.

Until the very end, when Ali abruptly said bye and went into the house instead of going in for the kiss Andrew hoped for. At this point Andrew thought he had blown it, later finding out the reason for the abrupt departure and no kiss was Ali's fear that she had boogers on her face from the cold. That was Andrew's first clue that maybe Ali wasn't quite as "cool girl" as he had always assumed.

Shortly after the first date, things were made official. With the end of Ali’s intern year coming up and a move to Salt Lake City on the horizon, we tried to get as much time as possible together. This led to Ali asking Andrew to come to Vietnam with her after 3 weeks of dating.

Andrew said yes, and a month later we were off to South East Asia. It proved to be a very eventful trip including broken ribs and leeches, but the most important event was our first I love you.

After 9 months, hundreds of hours on FaceTime and quick weekend trips to and from Boise, Andrew finally moved to Salt Lake City.

The day Andrew moved to SLC, he began planning how he would ask Ali to marry him. In early August, the perfect situation finally came together. During a a hike at Brighton ski resort, Ali mentioned that she had a work retreat the following weekend, and that is when Andrew saw an opportunity.

The next weekend, Andrew drove to Boise, got a ring, asked Ali’s parents for their permission and got back to Salt Lake without Ali being any the wiser.

The following weekend, they returned to the same hike at Brighton. Brighton was the perfect location. It had become a place of many firsts in our relationship. It was where we ran our first trail race together (Ali left Andrew behind) and where we went skiing together for the first time (Andrew left Ali behind). So Andrew decided what better place to start the beginning of the rest of their lives together.

A few miles into the hike on a cliff over looking Lake Mary, Andrew got down on one knee and asked Ali to marry him. She proceeded to almost fall off the cliff because she was so excited. Luckily she didn’t and we have been loving engaged life.

We cannot wait to celebrate the next chapter in this story with all of the most important people in our lives.

Thank you all for being a part of our love story.