Emmi was born December 22nd, 1998, in Raleigh, North Carolina, and Noah was born a thousand miles away in Des Moines, Iowa, three months later (to the day!) on March 22nd, 1999.

That distance changed after Noah and his family moved to Gainesville, Florida in 2009, and then to Raleigh in the summer of 2015.

Emmi and Noah never saw each other or crossed paths, even as Noah lived on the exact same street as Emmi's Aunt Essie and Uncle Vann, attended church at the Millbrook High School campus, where Emmi's brother, Sonny, attended school, and ate at El Dorado, a restaurant they both loved that was right down the road from both of their high schools.

It's surprising how long it took for us to finally run into one another. We joke all the time about how we probably passed one another at the store or on the road so many times, yet we never knew what the future would have in store for us both. :)

After so many years of near misses of almost bumping into each other, we finally met while working.

We became friends instantly.

Soon, as it goes, we spent more time together and began falling in love.

Holiday Inn Express & Suites Raleigh North - Wake Forest, an IHG Hotel