During a time in my life when I had decided, I was perfectly fine with being single forever, living alone, and traveling the world Alex came along. He noticed me (and my Pochahontas-y hair according to him) at the gym and waited months to approach me. When he finally worked up the guts to say hello to me at The Livery, he was answered with a curt "nice to meet you" and very little interest. What Alex was unaware of is how serious I am about team trivia, and unfortunately, he was trying to meet his future bride while the announcer was asking an important question that I probably definitely knew the answer to. (Nope) Feeling slightly discouraged but knowing well that those dimples are more powerful than that, he desperately turned to Pauline hoping for an "in". She is helpful in my decision later on in the story. Luckily, not all hope was lost because Alex made a second attempt to win me over. This time, he fired up a convo at the most inappropriate time (he just couldn't wait!) - while I was using the hamstring curl machine at the gym. He figures out that I'm there to work and not to meet men and leaves. Alex now knows my name and has one more trick up his sleeve. He finds my Facebook profile and plainly messages me one thing. "Would you like to grab dinner sometime?" WINNER! WINNER! WINNER! He unknowingly finds the true way to my heart - food. I figured that it was safe enough. I had met the cute dimple man who wears the same Michigan State shirt to the gym enough to accompany him to my favorite activity which is eating. He picked me up to go to Bentwood Tavern, a fancy restaurant in New Buffalo, and I was hooked. And although this wasn't the "moment I knew I would marry Alex" (that was a few months later when he adoringly picked something out of my teeth for me) I finally experienced the butterflies that everyone talks about when they're in love for the first time in my life. Unless it was the sushi we shared that night...

My story of how we met began in the winter of 2017 were we faced one of the coldest winters over the last decade and my life generally consisted of long hours at work, dinner with friends, and trying to enjoy the limited sun Michiganders receive during cold winter months. I first recognized Alyson at the gym and figured she was just in town visiting family over the holidays and would not be here long. As January came around I noticed Alyson was still at the gym. I had to build up the courage to introduce myself without being "that guy" at the gym. As weeks went on I remember telling myself, "Alright, I'm going to go talk to her next time I see her" and with luck on my side, I happened to be at The Livery for trivia night and Alyson comes walking through the front doors. I noticed a few of my friends were standing around Alyson and figured it was fate and I had to see her. As I walked up to the table to introduce myself, Alyson was so invested in the trivia questions she wanted nothing to do with me so I proceeded to introduce myself to the rest of the table and spent enough time to at least make my presence known and get her name. The following day, January 20th, 2018, I figured my chances were slim so I'm just going to be direct and messaged Alyson "would you like to have dinner with me? " after the longest 22 hours awaiting the response she stated, "I'd love to!". From there we worked on coordinating a time to meet and unfortunately, our schedules were not cooperating. Two of our good friends (Ryan and Rachael) keep telling me, "we had dinner with this family and found the perfect girl for you", I assume mostly because Ryan and I spent every weekend together and Rachael was seeking a new friend to hang out with. I kept telling them, I met a girl the other night so I had no interest. The following weekend Alyson told me she was volunteering at the winter beer fest in St. Joesph and told her I would plan on being there hopefully to schedule our date. As I arrived at the event full of friends and family, I finally got a chance to walk around with Alyson and get to know each other better. As we continued to walk through the festival together we ran into Racheal who was also volunteering, as I walked up to her booth to introduce her to Alyson she whispered, " that's the girl!