Jessica was in Bowling Green, Kentucky. Craig was in Jackson, Tennessee. Both were ready to get out.
Preparing to move out of her hometown for the first time as she applied for grad school, Jessica headed south and visited several schools before deciding on North Alabama.
At the end of 2016, Craig heard about a sports reporting job in Florence, AL. Just before he left town, someone told him about a church there he should check out. Preoccupied with a new job and looking for an apartment, Craig quickly forgot the name, though he thought it started with a W.
On his first day in Florence, as he drove around town checking out apartments, he pulled into a parking lot to look at his phone for directions to the next place on his list.
A sign at the parking lot said Woodmont Baptist Church. “Woodmont!” That was it. He made a mental note to check it out later.
Jessica was already part of a young adults group at Woodmont, and that’s where they met in spring 2017. Their shared home state was a handy conversation starter, and Craig finally got the nerve to ask her out in July … in the same parking lot he had pulled into when he looked for apartments that day.
Over the more than two years since, two Kentuckians who had no idea why they ended up in Florence, Alabama learned exactly why indeed.