Joel and Evie met at the house of their pastor (then associate pastor), Chad, after church one Sunday in 2016. It was Joel's first or second Sunday at Highland Crest Baptist Church, and Pastor Chad, who had noticed Joel and wanted to make him feel welcome, decided to invite him and others around his age for lunch. Evie was one of those invitees.

Joel mentioned at that lunch that he had attended New Tribes Bible Institute in Waukesha before attending UW-Eau Claire for college. That tidbit immediately caught Evie's attention. Her parents had met at that exact Bible school. What an amazing coincidence, it seemed.

The following Sunday, Evie made sure to say hi to Joel during the greeting portion of the church service. It was completely uncharacteristic for her to do something so forward (in her mind), and she felt really foolish afterward. But that gesture allowed Joel to feel more comfortable starting conversations with her later on. Those first few interactions led to more until the two were pretty good friends. And then eventually more than friends.

Joel proposed the Sunday before Thanksgiving on November 18, 2018. They had planned to hang out that day, and Joel suggested playing a computer game called Fight the Dragon. They had bought it months before, specifically to play together, but they didn't do it very often. So Joel said they should play that day, since the last time had been a while ago.

They each had to play on their own computers, so after church that day, Evie went to her apartment, and Joel went to his. He had told her in the days leading up to that Sunday that he would look for a good level to play together. When they were both logged in, he suggested a specific level called A Stolen Kingdom. After Evie found it, Joel told her he had to step away from his computer to do something for a little bit, so he couldn't play that level with her, but he would be around if she had questions. Evie didn't think anything of it, so she started the level.

One of the appeals of this game when they had decided to buy it was the ability for players to build their own levels. Evie had never tried it, and as far as she knew Joel hadn't either. But the first character she encountered in the level was named after Joel's mom, and then Evie knew something was up. The character told her that Treefiddy (Joel's username) was missing and she needed to find him.

As she progressed through the level, she met various other characters, all named after Joel's family and closest friends. Those characters gave her a short rhyme to solve. The rhymes led to five places or things in her apartment that meant something to Joel and Evie. At each of these places Joel had hidden a card the night before with a note about something that he loved or appreciated about her and a clue on the back. The final rhyme told her she needed to go to the place where they had first met to get the sixth and final clue.

Evie quickly put away her laptop, picked up her stuff, and headed to Pastor Chad's house. When she got there, she was met by Chad's five boys standing on the front porch step, holding nerf guns, and protecting a vase with a dozen roses and the final clue. After asking for her paperwork, they let her pass (though not before one of them accidentally knocked the vase over. Haha). She collected the final note, and it told her how to decode the clues to find Joel's location.

Each note had a series of numbers on the back of them which corresponded to certain letters. She worked out the code to find the name of Joel's location: Pamperin Park bridge. She drove over there, where he had been waiting for her. After asking how the level went, he told her how much he loved her. Then he got down on one knee, and tried to ask her in Tagalog if she would marry him. Unfortunately, Google Translate is not a reliable way to figure out how to say "Will you marry me?" in another language, so his words were all wrong and just sounded really funny. Nevertheless she understood one word "mag-asawa" which means to become his wife. She said yes (in English), and the rest is history.