March 2018, right after moving to Cleveland with her family, Elle created a Tinder account for her dog on a dare. A few blocks away, in the CASE Western dorms, Mario swiped right on Jemma. Elle was unsure about meeting someone online, but her step-brother encouraged such irresponsibility.

Their first date was at a Starbucks on CASE Western's campus on March 8th during a white out. When Mario walked in (in a beanie and red flannel), Elle knew she made the right choice. After hours of talking, they decided to meet the next day, and the day after, and so on - until Elle's Mom was wondering why she was studying so much at the Starbucks.

They dated for a few months in secret before Mario went home to California and took a break from school (and Elle, she's not salty it's totally okay).

Eight months later, Mario came back to Ohio and asked Elle for coffee. After 5 hours they realized that they never wanted to be apart again.

To this day Mario claims that he was going to kiss her cheek and he missed, Elle still calls bull. It is likely they will die with this disagreement.

June 2020, Elle and Mario decided to move in with each other and bring along Jemma. A year later, they found a litter of kittens and Valkyrie joined their family. Happy with this new addition, Mario adopted his new personality "Cat Dad."

In May 2022, after Mario graduated from CASE Western, Elle brought home a kitten without telling Mario. In order to convince Elle to stop finding and bringing home kittens, he named the kitten "Big Old Bag Of Beans."

With way too many animals, the couple decided to relocated to Washington D.C.

Six short months after their move, Mario asked Elle to marry him after 4.5 years together, and she obviously said yes.

In order to make things more complicated, Elle decided to get married in the middle of her Master's program at American University.

The couple is thrilled to enter this new phase in life. It has been obvious from the beginning that these two were meant to be together, their happiest moments are when they are with each other. They are excited to celebrate their marriage with everyone this June.