We begin where all beautiful love stories begin—the first year council for student government at The University of Tennessee, Knoxville. Josh and I, being the overachievers we were, joined SGA early into our freshman years in the fall of 2016. We probably met at one point, but neither of us can remember an exact meeting. Nevertheless, we became acquainted during this time to the point of becoming Facebook friends. We ran in similar circles throughout college and had many mutual friends.

Our next scene takes us to January of 2021. I joined the dating app Hinge. It was about 7 months since I graduated from college, and we were all well into the pandemic. It had been hard to make new friends with so many public spaces closed or limited on capacity, and my roommate had been going on dates she found through Hinge and Bumble. I wanted to meet new people, and I set the radius for eligible people to within 20 miles of Knoxville because I didn’t want to be driving long distances. I was starting law school in the fall, and knew I was going to be busy, so simplicity was key.

One Sunday in March, I was sitting on our brown sectional (the same sectional where I actually broke up with my first boyfriend junior year in college; it is truly the circle of life) after church when I checked my Hinge account. A guy named Josh liked one of my pictures. Which beautiful, stunning, breathtaking picture of mine did he like? Oh, just the picture of me imitating Jeremy Pruitt wearing his orange and white checkered mask gaiter over his head like a Russian babushka. I recognized him from college, so the initial confirmation that he at least makes good friends was encouraging. He had a picture of himself wearing a skull cap type thing with sensors for a brain experiment he did in class. I told him that we had pictures with similar vibes as each other. Neither of us acknowledged that we knew who the other person was—I didn’t want to come on too strong and seem creepy for remembering him, but I’d come to learn that Josh has a mind like a steel trap, so it wouldn’t have fazed him. I had a prompt about how I often say, “It’s just like that one SNL sketch!” so we talked about our favorite SNL videos (mine is Surprise Party and his is Dear Sister).

Then Josh ripped the Band-Aid off and sent this message: "You seem really familiar. Are you the girl that's always photoshopped on a Mariah Carey Christmas album?"

Thank you, zealous 18 year old Claire, for becoming Facebook friends with a boy you probably requested before you’d even had a formal meeting. Or maybe it was Josh who was the zealous one. Regardless, we can excuse some election meddling from Facebook because they helped connect me to my future husband.

I am so sorry to admit to all my friends currently on dating apps that Josh is the one and only date I went on from a dating app. Stay strong in the trenches. For those not on dating apps, an important part of progression is “taking the conversation out of the app,” aka, getting the other person’s phone number and texting instead of messaging on the app. After a few days of messaging, I offered my phone number to Josh, and after the eloquent, “Hey it’s Josh from Hinge lol,” he asked me to go on a date the next time he was in Knoxville.

This takes us to a fun detail in our story: Josh was living in Murfreesboro at the time we connected. The weekend we matched on Hinge, he was in Knoxville visiting a friend and decided to change his location to Knoxville to see what was out there. He hit some bad traffic on the way out of town, so while in standstill traffic, he got on the app and here we are. So much for meeting a new person and not driving long distances.

Our first date was at the beginning of April. Wanting a classic first date experience of being picked up and ignoring any warning signs of a quasi-stranger danger, I took Josh up on his offer to pick me up from my house. I had taken the LSAT just a few months prior, but my heart was beating even harder than when I took that exam as I waited for him. He was wearing a green Bonnaroo shirt with a flannel and khaki shorts. What a granola guy. We went to Pour Taproom for drinks and to play Scrabble. I used Spanish words because I knew he wouldn’t correct me because it was a first date, but he still won. After Pour, we went to Waffle House because I told him how much I love that place. I accidentally knocked a bottle of hot sauce off the table, and it shattered on the ground, splashing hot sauce all over Josh’s shorts, legs, and crotch. I was mortified, but I was having such a good time with him that I willed myself into minimizing my embarrassment. I’m still impressed at how much I suppressed those feelings inside of me.

After Waffle House, we sat on my front porch for about another hour. Knowing that he lived in Murfreesboro, I asked him the next day to go on our second date—lunch on Sunday at Soccer Taco. We used tortilla chips to explain our family trees, and I had to crush that chip to get enough pieces for my family. We went on a few more dates over the span of about a month and a half. Because of the distance, we had to wait a longer than normal amount of time between dates, but I appreciate the patience it afforded us. On our third date, Josh asked if he could hug me because he’s a gentleman. I said yes and cradled the back of his head like you do when you’re comforting a grieving person. I panicked but obviously felt comfortable with him. There are worse things I could've done than give him an endearing embrace.

In late May, Josh came over to my house and brought ingredients to make gyoza and watch She's the Man. He had just returned from his Alaska trip, and I’d asked him to get me postcards of flowers. He handed me a card with purple flowers on the front and said, “I wrote you a note in there.” I said, “Do you want me to read it now or wait until you leave?” knowing that some people get uncomfortable when you read a note in front of them. “It doesn’t matter,” he replied. He walked into the kitchen and began prepping the meat for the gyoza. I opened the card: he’d written a short and sweet note about how much he’d enjoyed getting to know me, he asked me to be his girlfriend and just like George Strait, listed boxes to check yes or no. I marked the “yes” box and walked over to him, but because he was handling raw meat, I held the card up for him to see. He smiled and nodded his head, so I put the card down and gave him a side hug. It was weird and awkward, and I loved it. Most importantly, it was special and thoughtful and I’m thankful that I will always have a tangible keepsake of that moment.

We dated long distance for almost two years. It was a gift in many ways, and awful in many ways. The biggest gift of dating long distances for that amount of time is that I appreciate being able to see him frequently and easily on a level that I wouldn’t have developed had I not gone long periods of time without seeing him.

The day that Josh proposed to me in November 2023 was my last day of class for the fall semester. I had a suspicion that he was proposing that Friday, so I asked two of my friends to get our nails done so I could be prepared. While at the nail salon, Josh texted me that he had made extra food for dinner, and asked if he could drop some off at my apartment. I said sure, and he told me to text him when I got home so he could head over to me. This detail is important. When I arrived back at my apartment, I texted Josh that I was back, then sat in my car scrolling on my phone for about 20 minutes. You see, I love sitting in my car at the end of the day. I live alone, but there is something about the solitude of my car. Thinking he was on his way over, I planned to sit there until I saw Josh walking into my apartment. After a while, I finally decided to go inside despite not seeing Josh yet. When I opened my door, Josh was sitting on my living room floor, surrounded by candles, pictures of us, and a rose petal path from the door to him. I said, “What are you doing?” three times—there was a teeny tiny part of me that thought, “Maybe this isn’t a proposal, maybe he’s just being really nice”—and he responded, “Bet you weren’t expecting this.” It then hit me that he had been waiting inside my apartment while I scrolled on my phone in my car. Bless his heart. I walked over, kneeled on the ground with him, he said something really nice things, and then he proposed! The room was dim when he pulled out the ring, so I said, “TURN ON THE LIGHTS!” I didn’t know what the ring would look like, and he did an incredible job with this beautiful piece of jewelry. A special shoutout here to my friends Alison and Cassidy with whom I went to the nail salon. I was talking their ears off that day with my theories of when I'd get engaged and they didn't let on at all that they knew what was happening that night.

After he proposed, we went back to the Waffle House where we had our first date, where I tried desperately to be in the moment, but I was calling and texting people like crazy. Funny enough, I had told multiple friends in law school that I thought I was getting engaged that week, so I was following up with them to confirm my suspicions. The next day, I had a meeting at school about a project, and I picked up my water bottle approximately 50 times trying to get the other people in the room to notice my ring.

Getting to love and be loved by Josh is an incredible honor. He came into my life right when I was beginning law school and we’ve navigated long distance dating and marriage discussions through the stress of school and uncertainty in my professional career. He brings me joy, comfort, wisdom, and friendship. He’s intense like me. He takes care of me. He’s hardworking, curious about food, extremely nerdy, strong willed, hilarious, and thoughtful. Most importantly, he is steadfast in his love for the Lord and guides me back to Him every day. I often say to Josh, "Thanks for being my friend," because even though we are in fact romantically in love, he is such a good friend to me. I’m excited to hang out with him for the rest of our lives.