It was 8am on a hot summer morning at the Lynchburg Lowe’s when Emma and Craig first became acquaintances. Craig was walking out of the breakroom and paused to conclude his conversation with one of the guys: “But I have to go to the gym tonight. I’m in my gym bro era!” As he walked out the door, Emma chuckled to herself and thought, That guy is hilarious and so completely himself.

For almost a year after that, Craig would stop at the Customer Service desk to say hi once a week or so. When he left, Emma would text her friends, “You’ll never believe the audacity of this man, flirting with me again!” Emma would have told you that she didn’t have feelings for Craig, that he was just another guy at Lowe’s, that flirting with him wasn’t the highlight of her week. And she would have believed herself. But, she also could tell you exactly where his name was on the schedule, because every day at the beginning of her shift she checked to see if he was working. She didn’t know it, but Craig was slowly becoming the best part of her days.

While the attraction grew quietly for Emma, Craig’s experience was much different. He wasn’t unsure of how he felt; no, he definitely knew that Emma was the kind of girl you marry. But he also knew that she was sassy and confident and definitely most likely not interested in him. And he had anecdotal evidence for that claim, because Emma’s sassy lines at work walked the line of sarcastic so well that they might as well have been honest.

Despite Emma’s comments, Craig knew that she was the best part of his day at work. He stopped by the customer service desk to talk with her as often as he could, and when she finally did decide to join the MST team, he couldn’t wait to spend more time with her and get to know her better so that one day maybe he could convince her to give it a shot. But Craig’s friends were adamant: if he wanted her to say yes, he needed to ask her, and there was no time like the present.

One day in June, nearly a year after they met, Craig made the decision: today was the day. It was an interesting day to choose; Emma had been cussed out by several customers and was headed home to cry on her lunch break. She even told Craig to not have any serious conversations with her, because she might snap and nobody knew when. But Craig knew it was now or never.

So he asked her out that day in the parking lot, and she said yes. The next week they went to Barnes and Noble, looked at every book, movie, and puzzle in the store, and drank coffee and talked so long that they were asked to leave the store twice at closing. It was a first date made in heaven. From there, they went on several more dates, until Emma got scared and ended things. While it was a hard decision and she cried a lot at the gym that day, she felt that it was right for her season. She told him not to wait for her or try to win her back; she simply wasn’t prepared for the relationship.

After two weeks, though, she knew she had made a huge mistake. Even though Craig had only been in her life outside of work for a few weeks, she felt his absence deeply. Their friendship began to blossom again at work, and it was too beautiful to lose. One day after work they got coffee to talk it over and ended the evening in the Lowe’s parking lot (where else). It was there that they decided to make it official, so on Christmas in July they started dating.

From there, it wasn’t necessarily smooth sailing but it was headed toward marriage from day one. Craig and Emma played games together, went for a lot of walks, and made several delicious meals. Emma’s anxiety played a significant role in their relationship, and they learned to navigate that together while they also worked around Craig’s crazy work schedule with two jobs. Both the adventures and the struggles bound them together, and they knew by the end of the year that this was going to last until the end of their lives.

As most people reading this know, they didn’t take the next official step for several more months. On March 22, 2024, they decided to go for a walk after work. They drove to Hollins Mill Park, where they watched the waterfall until they heard chanting behind them. They turned around to see four of Craig’s friends, dressed as monks and carrying burning candles, chanting lux solaris, the Latin word for sunshine. They set up the candles around a blanket, where Craig knelt on one knee with a ring box playing “You are my sunshine” and proposed to Emma. She was nodding her head the whole time he professed his love to her, and they have been basking in the joy of that moment ever since.

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