How We Met

June 12th, 2021: The Big Dig
Christen & Gary first met at North Ave Beach playing the Big Dig volleyball tournament against each other in pool play, the clash of the titans “The Notorious D.I.G.” vs “Red Leather Seats”. A moment neither of thought too much about at the time.

July 9th, 2021: The Friday before Waupaca unbeknownst to us, we’re both invited to play sand volleyball at Foster Beach in the morning, both of us going to a grass volleyball tournament called Waupaca Boatride in Oshkosh Wisconsin later that day, aka the Super Bowl of outdoor volleyball. This was a good get to know you as our teams were in the same hotel block so we’d be spending the entire weekend together.

July 10th, 2021: The Night Before Waupaca
Christen & Gary’s teams are hanging out at the hotel, talking, drinking, and playing Uno. Christen rolls in and is adamantly against playing Uno, Gary thinks “what’s this girls deal”.

July 11th, 2021: Day of Waupaca
We spent the day playing and talking, after both teams were knocked out is when we really started interacting. The rest of the night was spent talking and flirting, Gary promised he would stay on Sunday and watch her play reverse coed. He unfortunately had a few too many Twisted Teas Saturday night and woke up feeling, we’ll call it unwell. Unable to stay and watch, Gary drove home and slept for the rest of Sunday. Strong start.

Week of July 12th, 2021: Silence
For the first week after Waupaca Boatride we sat there waiting for each other to text first but… *crickets*

Week of July 19th, 2021
We still disagree to this day on who texted who first, but eventually we started talking again and fell into a routine of spending basically every free summer day at Foster Beach. We shared Christen’s giant Costco towel, played volleyball, gossiped, Gary gave Christen rides home to extend our time together as long as possible leading to us sitting in the Sandburg Terrace roundabout talking way longer than we’d care to admit.

September 11th, 2021: Official
Eventually Christen asked, “So… are you going to ask me to be your girlfriend?” to which Gary replied, “I thought you already were.”

September 23rd, 2023: Move In
Christen and Gary officially moved in together in their current apartment in Roscoe Village.

April 13th, 2024: Aurora
After months of Gary begging, Christen agrees to foster a cat from the Catcade for 2 weeks, but only foster… and we end up bringing home Aurora, a 2 year old silver tabby.

April 25th, 2024: Permanent family addition
Aurora is the best and joins the family full time. How could we get rid of her?

November 29th, 2024:
While visiting for the weekend for Thanksgiving Gary asks Christen’s parents for their blessing, they said yes.

December 15th, 2024: Ring shopping
Christen and Gary go to Millennium Park to see the Christmas lights, Christmas tree, and Macys windows. Since we were by Jewelers Row we decided to stop in and try on engagement rings…

March 28th, 2025: The Trip
Christen and Gary leave for a trip to Europe where they’re visiting Amsterdam, Ghent, and Paris.

March 31st, 2025: Proposal
7:20 am CET Christen and Gary leave Amsterdam heading to Ghent via train, mid trip the train stops and the announcer says “Er is een landelijke treinstaking, we keren terug naar de vorige halte. Morgen worden de ritten hervat” for those that don’t speak Dutch that translates to “There is a nation wide train strike, we will be returning to the previous stop. Trips will resume tomorrow”. Little did Christen know Gary was proposing to Christen that night, so we NEEDED to get there. We began frantically checking buses, flights, rental cars, anything that could get us there but to no avail. We did our best Amazing Race impersonation stringing multiple train rides together and made it work, our 2 hour ride quickly turned into 7 hours, but we made it.

6pm CET After roughly 3-4 glasses of wine on the river at Het Spijker we made our way to dinner, or so Christen thought. During our walk under the willow trees next to the river Gary, who admittedly drew a blank for words, asked Christen to marry him. She said yes.

April 5th, 2025: Engagement Party
After their return from Europe Christen and Gary planned to go watch the NCAA March Madness Duke vs Houston game at the Reveler with some friends (70-67 buzzer beater finish, it was a great game). At The Reveler Gary had a surprise engagement party planned with close friends and family. An unnamed bridesmaid (cough cough Hunter) forgot to turn off her location on Snapchat which almost gave away the surprise, with some quick thinking from Christen’s mom, Meg, and a perfectly timed fake tummy ache from Gary, Christen was thrown off the scent and was successfully surprised.