It all started down at the end of the bar at Corey's brother's brewery, WildEdge, in Cortez, CO. Ellie needed to use some Internet (thank goodness the Shiprock call apartment has never provided this amenity...) and Corey was filling in for an absent bartender (rumor has it the absentee was their soon-to-be officiant, Amy Huckins). A few IPAs, a well-timed New Yorker article, and a lot of conversation later, the two were bonded.

Corey and Ellie spent the next year falling in love while commuting back and forth between Los Angeles, where Ellie was living part-time, and Cortez, CO/Shiprock, NM. Corey quickly became father (and arguably preferred parent- ask Corey sometime about the skiing challenge) to Ellie's black lab, Bodie, who predated Corey in Ellie's life by a mere 13 days. They fell in love with each other's families and friends and had adventures in Vancouver, the Dolomites in Italy, Baja, and all over their beloved Four Corners home. Ellie and Bo moved in with Corey in Cortez in 2019, and the three bought their home with views of the Sleeping Ute Mountain and Mesa Verde in early 2020.

In April 2020, Corey proposed to Ellie on the top of a mesa used by the Shiprock crew for their long-standing Wednesday "Mesa Night" cook out tradition. In August of that year, they were married in their backyard by Ellie's dad with just their immediate family- who braved broken hips and cross-country RV rides with multiple small children in the middle of a pandemic- to be there. As special as that was, we missed our extended families and friends-who-might-as-well-be-family desperately, and are so excited to have this chance to come together and celebrate!

Ellie works as a physician at Northern Navajo Medical Center with a side gig teaching forensic asylum medicine and community organizing at Cambridge Health Alliance in Boston. Corey keeps Cortez as home base while his freelance filmmaking career takes him all over the world.