Jake and I met in November of 2021. We matched on Hinge and his first message to me was “Country Roooaaaaaads”, with my response being, “take me homeeeeeeeeee.” His following response was, “How about I take you to dinner instead?”. Very smooth.

It was a few weeks before we met in person because I was healing from surgery I had at the beginning of November. On the night before Thanksgiving, Jakes best friend convinced him to take a chance to come out and meet me at a bar I was at with my friends in Valpo, Franklin House. Which he did. He asked me to dinner and even signed my cast with “Country Roads”. Even though I was not looking to date, I said yes. He picked me up with my broken foot, offered me his coat and took me to dinner. We went to a restaurant called Radius. He told me he moved here from Michigan and had no friends or family around. So I introduced him to all my friends, we started going to the gym together and would hangout nearly every day.

My friends started telling me that Jake had feelings for me, which I did not want to believe. I had gone through some really hard things and I learned that he did too. Neither of us were ready to let emotions in.

March comes around and we had our first kiss. He laid one on me when I was not expecting it. Since I was not ready, it was actually pretty bad lol. But on another day, the second kiss happened and it honestly felt like a dream. Even after that, we were both still reserved and stubborn with our feelings. Mainly me. Jake had finally admitted to me that he had feelings for me but I wasn't sure how I felt about it yet because I was scared, which pretty much made him take back what he said. So we then decided to just be friends.

That next Friday night, we went to the bars with our friends. Vince and Jake went to Northside while Katie and I went to Franklin House. The whole 20 minutes Katie and I were there, I could not stop thinking about Jake. In that moment, I found myself pouring out the drink a guy had just bought for me, stopped him in the middle of his sentence, yanked Katie out of the building and drove to Northside. We stood in line to get in for about 15 minutes in the snow and once we finally did get in, I found Jake and I just hugged him and felt at ease.

Even after this, Jake was ready to commit to me and I was still petrified to let him in. It took some time, but in May of 2022, he asked me to be his girlfriend and in February of 2024 he surprised me with decorating the Four Corners Winery barn and asked me to be his wife.

Our story is long, complicated, stubborn, sweet and anything but boring. But knowing the two of us were hurt so badly in the past, the fact that we found each other at the perfect time, created an amazing friendship and fell in love after all the obstacles is really special. I would do it all again just to be with him.