The first time Alyssa and Josiah were technically introduced was during the first week of Josiah’s freshman year and Alyssa’s sophomore year at Bethany Lutheran College. Josiah and Carter Jack, his roommate and cross country teammate, went to get Late Night from the Dining Center one night. There, they saw another runner on the team, Kayla Tobin, getting food as well. She went up to Josiah and said, “Hey Josiah, this is Alyssa. She’s also a math person!”

“Oh no,” Carter Jack said. “They’re multiplying!”

“Carter,” Josiah began, “do you know what you just said?”

Carter was not thrilled that he had just made a math pun. (If you ask Alyssa, she will tell you that she has no memory of this, since she was too focused on getting her chicken nuggets that night.)

Alyssa and Josiah both came to Bethany with intentions to double major in mathematics and secondary mathematics education, so they had several classes together over the years. In addition to seeing each other in the classroom, they also played in the concert band and were both residential assistants during Josiah’s sophomore year and Alyssa’s junior year. The band director asked Josiah to switch from alto saxophone to baritone saxophone during his spring semester as a freshman. This happened to be the same instrument that Alyssa played in the jazz band. Not just the same kind of instrument—the exact same instrument, since Bethany only has one good baritone saxophone. (Don’t worry, they each had their own mouthpiece and reed to use!)

Alyssa and Josiah began to talk a little more when they were in Probability and Statistics I and II in the fall of 2022 and spring of 2023. Over winter break that school year, Josiah sent a text to Alyssa with a math question he came up related to the class—Alyssa had to tell him that she was on “break brain”, however, and she would have to think about it another time.

That school year, during spring break, the concert band went on tour in the American southwest. Alyssa and Josiah found themselves talking to each other more during the trip, where Josiah convinced her to fill out the junior ranger booklet for a couple national parks so that she could get a shiny badge with him. They kept talking after returning from band tour, and Josiah decided to ask her to the spring formal dance because of how fun it was to spend time with Alyssa. He convinced her to come to his residence hall one night so that he could give her a 3D-printed support structure for a print he had finished the day before. (Alyssa had displayed a childlike fascination in tearing apart unusable 3D prints over the past school year). She went over and he took her to his room so that she could use some clippers to more effectively destroy the piece of plastic. While they were in his room, he asked if she was going to the spring formal dance with anyone. She replied that she was planning on going with a couple of her friends, so Josiah placed a 3D-printed shape called a gyroid into her hand and asked, “Could I bribe you to go with me instead?”

Alyssa reiterated that she was just planning on going with her friends. At this point, she was slightly panicking, as she liked Josiah a little bit, but didn’t know what to say. Josiah asked again as she was going to leave, and she said, “Well, we’ll definitely see each other there!”

That is not a sentence a boy wants to hear from a girl he is interested in.

Thankfully, one of Alyssa’s friends talked some sense into her that night and she texted back asking if Josiah would go with her.

After a couple more weeks of more frequent communication, they decided that they wanted to start dating. It was after 11 pm that night, so Alyssa asked Josiah if their anniversary should be that day (April 18, 2023) or the next day (April 19, 2023). Josiah said the next day, since 4 + 19 = 23, so the day would be easy to remember. Several months later Alyssa said that we needed to do the same thing for our wedding day, since otherwise she wouldn’t remember. The best we could do is that 7 and 26 are both 1 less than a cubic number.

The only stipulation that Alyssa gave Josiah for her engagement ring was that it couldn’t be 3D printed. He decided to 3D print one anyway, and also 3D printed a box that could switch between the plastic ring and the real one with the press of a button.

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