Hannah and Ethan met during their Wesclin Middle School band days; however, they were not actively in each other’s lives until high school. After high school football games, the band members typically found themselves at McDonalds or Dairy King to order food and chat. After the homecoming game in 2017, Hannah and Ethan sat together at a booth at Dairy King. As they spoke about the homecoming dance that was coming up the next day, Hannah was baffled to find out that Ethan would not be attending the dance. He had no date and planned on staying home to hang out with his friend. Hannah told him that the following year, she would go with him so that he had a reason to go. Crazily enough, they ended up dating a few months later, so Hannah did keep her promise and took him to homecoming.

In February of 2017, Hannah was struggling with a timpani piece in concert band. She did not want to mess up at the concert, so she went to Ethan for help. He began tutoring her after school for the next few weeks. Once they were talking on a more regular basis, they started dating and have been inseparable ever since.

Ethan graduated high school in 2018 and went on to SIUE to pursue his degree in computer science. Hannah also decided to go there a year later to get her degree in elementary education. They went on to do a lot of the same activities in college: Make-A-Wish, Drumline, InterVarsity, and Student Government. After college, in 2023, they bought a house together. A few months later, Ethan took Hannah on a “date day” to propose. Since SIUE was such a huge part of their relationship, Ethan wanted to take Hannah geocaching there. This is something that they have already done before on campus, so Ethan “found” a new geocache location on campus for them to explore. Little did Hannah know, Ethan actually placed that geocache himself. The clue led her directly to a bottle with a note in it written by Ethan. During the proposal, Ethan had their good friends LeaMarie and Jason staked out taking pictures and recording the whole thing.