Jamie & Christian first met in the fall of 2020, in their Advanced Data Journalism class, which they took virtually during their senior year at The University of North Carolina.

But they could have met long before.

Be it through knowing the same people, attending the same parties at the same time, or being moments apart in the same line to meet puppies during finals week, looking back, they were *that close* to meeting plenty of times.

But they almost didn’t meet at all.

Just after starting the class, Christian wanted to drop it. The class did not satisfy any necessary requirements, and would be a lot of work in his second-to-last semester. But he felt like he should stick it out, and he told his mom, “There’s a pretty cute girl in the class, so maybe I should stay in and see what happens.”

By coincidence, Jamie shared a similar sentiment, expressing to her friends that “There was a cute guy in her class, but nothing was ever going to happen there.”

The two ended up in separate pairings, investigating the same story about the lack of funding of North Carolina’s public health departments.

Since the groups were to work on the same story all semester, their professor put the pairs together into a team of four, and our protagonists were formally introduced.

Though the two enjoyed their group conversations, and early, innocuous flirting, they soon realized they wanted to get to know each other outside of a Zoom meeting. So, on October 17, 2020, the pair met in-person for the first time.

Before the end of their third meeting, Jamie & Christian knew that they had something special on their hands. They could not say it to each other just yet, but gosh darn it, they just knew. And when you know, you know.

Jamie thinks back to when they were hanging out early on, and her telling of a trip she took with her family to Europe. In the midst of the story, she looked over and saw Christian on Google Maps, zooming in on the towns she mentioned.

Christian recalls a night they refer to as “Taquitos Night” where they made, you guessed it, taquitos, danced, and talked until the sun came up. They spent hours that night discussing their pasts, hopes for the future, and stories about how their parents fell in love.

The pair had their first date on November 14th, where they went ice skating, got sushi, made cookies and ended the night watching Jamie’s favorite movie, The Princess Bride.

Jamie officially asked Christian to be her boyfriend in the wee hours of the morning on December 5th, just after she first met his family. That was at 2:34 A.M. By 2:35, they’d told each other they loved each other for the first time.

The couple spent their final semester becoming fully immersed in each other’s friendships, families, and lives. One major milestone for them was the wedding of Christian’s sister, Susannah, to her husband Hunter.

Christian wrote the story for the Johnson’s wedding website, and after having Jamie proof-read it, he told her that he could not wait to write their own wedding story one day. (Score.)

The summer and autumn following graduation, the two were apart. They lived at their respective homes, working odd jobs while searching for their first full-time positions. In that time apart, a little baby cat named Peter stumbled out from under a gas station gutter, and directly into their hearts.

Around the turn of the new year, Jamie & Christian found jobs in the Triangle, moving to Durham in January. After a couple of months of splitting time between each other’s apartments, they got fed up with it and moved in together in September 2022.

The couple moved to Raleigh in February 2023, and both found new jobs in their new city later that same year.

On September 2nd, 2023, while on a trip to Asheville, with family and friends there for the surprise, Christian gathered up all his courage, dropped to one knee, and asked Jamie to marry him at the Asheville Botanical Gardens.

She, in a moment of weakness, said yes. He nearly dropped her after picking her up for a photo op.

Jamie and Christian will be married at the North Carolina Arboretum in Asheville, North Carolina on October 6th, 2024.