Caleb and Ayla first met each other on the cross-country team at Union when Caleb was a sophomore and Ayla was a freshman. Ayla was secretly impressed that Caleb was an EMT and thought he was cute, but she decided they wouldn’t work together. On the bus trips to cross-country meets they would argue over whose turn it was to hold their coach’s baby (one of the flower girls in their wedding!) and sneak pictures of each other when they fell asleep doing homework. Several of their teammates were convinced they would start dating, but Caleb and Ayla didn’t think so just yet. For Thanksgiving Caleb agreed to drop Ayla off at a friend’s house. She was certain he was going to ask her out and was thinking of ways to say no, but turns out he was just that nice and didn’t mind driving her. That spring they were in the same chemistry class (let's just say there ended up being more than one kind of chemistry :)). At first, Ayla was just happy to have a teammate in the class, but then they started getting breakfast together every morning after lectures and meeting in Barefoots coffee shop in the afternoons. Ayla realized that she really looked forward to seeing Caleb and talking to him, and that scared her a little because they were just friends, right? Caleb, however, had begun to hope that there was something more, but finding the right time, the right place, and the right words to start that conversation was intimidating. :)

After their last track meet that spring, Caleb mustered up the courage and asked Ayla out on a date. They went rollerblading at a skating rink and then to Chipotle afterward. Both of them were full of nerves, but they had fun. Ayla was nervous about dating someone on the cross-country team, and she decided it wasn’t worth the risk of breaking up and still seeing each other every morning at 5am practice. After a lot of overthinking, she told Caleb she didn’t want to go on another date. Caleb felt like there might have been some unresolved emotions still present, but he also wanted to respect Ayla’s decision. He spent some time writing a letter to her, and she wrote back saying that she didn’t like him “that way,” but if that changed, she would write back.

To Ayla’s surprise, Caleb was amazingly mature about being turned down…and she started to regret her decision. After talking to her cousin Drew (one of her bridesmaids) that summer in Ohio, Ayla realized she was fooling herself and that she did like Caleb, so she sent him a very long text telling him she liked him. For the rest of the summer, they would call each other every weekend and talk for hours. They shared stories from life and from work as Ayla was working in a GI clinic and Caleb was working on an ambulance. They decided to start dating when they got back to campus on August 11th, 2023!

The next year was a rollercoaster of highs and lows as they got to know each other, totally misunderstood each other, and then tried again. Caleb told Ayla he loved her when they were stargazing and she forgot how to talk for a few seconds, then she told him she loved him too. They went to an Arcadian Wild concert in the fall and a Chris Renzema concert in the summer, two artists whom they both loved. They helped each other with organic chemistry homework and drew out all the amino acids for biochemistry together (we know chemistry class is a theme here). During the last summer that they were apart, Ayla would call Caleb when she was running and tell him about placenta research in Nebraska, while Caleb told her about MCAT prep resources. After their third and final cross-country season together had ended, Caleb asked Ayla to marry him in a park in Knoxville on November 22nd, 2024!

It feels strange to call this ‘Our Story’ when the story-writing has just started! Caleb will graduate from Union in May and he and Ayla will both start drafting applications to Quillen College of Medicine at East Tennessee State University! In the midst of a crazy amount of future planning, Ayla and Caleb keep reminding each other that the future is in God’s hands, and only He knows if medical school is in the future for them, or something else! Ayla and Caleb would appreciate your prayers for their marriage since they can’t do this on their own strength and want seeking God and becoming more like Christ to be the foundation of their marriage. We will need the wisdom and love and support of our friends and families as we learn to be a new family of our own <3.