Cullen and Joanna met at Dominion High School; Joanna's sophomore year and Cullen's freshman year. They were randomly placed in the same Clubhouse, which is Dominion's version of home room for weekly announcements and assembly groups. They talked from time to time, but that was the extent of their interaction for a year and a half.

During the winter of 2014, Joanna and Cullen started to grow closer through mutual friendships and by both being involved in the theater department at school. Their relationship really started once they started to visit a friend at work over winter break. They would constantly go and help close one of the local Dunkin Donuts. Throughout this time, they would play a game called Trivia Crack. This consisted of hours of answering questions about numerous subjects. They would talk through the app about casual topics on what they were doing that day, their interests, or their families. It wasn't until mid to late January that they finally started texting regularly.

On the morning of February 3rd, 2015, Cullen came to their high school with a rose in his backpack ready to ask Joanna to be his girlfriend. Right before the bell rang, they were in the auditorium and people started to pile in for their study hall. Since one of their friends told her what was going on, Joanna wasn't necessarily ready to be asked out in front of a big group of people so she started to mumble no under her breathe as she saw Cullen pulling out the rose to ask her. (I swear it's true, there's a video out there of this.) But of course she corrected herself and told him yes since she couldn't miss out on an opportunity to get to know Cullen better. After school, she reassured him that she was serious when she said yes and was just nervous to be in front of a bunch of people when he asked. They were smooth sailing from then on.

As they were both Juniors when they started dating, they went on as most normal high school relationships did. Joanna played soccer and ran cross-country. Cullen would go to the home games for soccer and sit with her family as she played. They were both active in the theater department and would work on lighting and building sets for the plays or musicals. Cullen worked at BGR (The Burger Joint) his senior year and he would bring late night milkshakes, cookies, or brownies to Joanna's house if he wanted to see her for a little bit or if he knew she had a rough day. They would even sometimes coordinate outfits for spirit week. Every so often, he would bring flowers to school in the mornings just to see her smile and it would work every time. The couple went to both junior and senior prom together and senior homecoming. As senior year of high school came to a close, they were gearing up for another challenge they would face together; the Marine Corps.

Joanna and Cullen can both agree that probably the most difficult time they had in their relationship would be during boot camp. After the first phase and letters started to come in more often, it was almost like they were in constant communication. Joanna would even try to find some music lyrics to send Cullen so that he'd have some sort of music even though he couldn't actually listen to it. After boot camp, the long distance relationship persisted even until now. With Cullen being stationed and North Carolina and Joanna going to community college and then Radford, they remained six hours away. When holidays would roll around, they would stay at his parents house so they could spend as much time as they could together. While working at a grocery store a couple of days a week during school and then all summer, Joanna would try to save up money so they could spend their anniversary and one other weekend together. While visiting Jacksonville, they'd go out in town to different restaurants, stores, and possibly even cook their favorite meal if they had a kitchenette in their hotel room. on deployments, they would talk when they could using whichever medium worked at the time. Although they have been a long distance relationship for majority of their relationship, they both feel as though it has made them stronger as a couple.

On Thanksgiving, Joanna and Cullen went over to her family's house early in the day to do a couple of things around the house. After spending a couple of hours doing chores so the house was ready for guests later that night, they went back over the Cullen's parents house and had a Thanksgiving lunch there. At around five or six o'clock, they all went over to Joanna's parents to have a Thanksgiving dinner with all of the family that was in town. Everyone had a great time and were enjoying themselves when Joanna's mom announced that she wanted a new family photo of the five Rohrbachs, Grandma Spring, Cullen, and Kyle. She handed someone her camera to take the picture while everyone lined up in the stairs. Once the picture was taken, everyone stayed in the front room and Joanna was slightly confused as to why no one was moving back to the family room. So she took the opportunity to give the dogs a treat since they had been behaving. Her grandma told her it wasn't the time for that, which made her even more confused, but she finished up and went back to Cullen's side. The room fell quiet and everyone was looking at them with their phones out. Cullen started to thank everyone for being there and that's when it clicked. Once again not liking being the center of attention or being put on the spot, Joanna quickly ran into the kitchen with Cullen quickly behind her. She sat on the ground not believing that this was actually happening. Trying to get her up and back in the front room, their families slowly started to come down the hallway and pile into the living room. Cullen got Joanna back onto her feet and moved into the center of the kitchen and got down on one knee. Shaking and crying, she said yes and everyone cheered for them. Even though it wasn't exactly what Cullen had planned to happen, but he still wouldn't change a thing. They have both been super excited to start their lives together and cannot wait to start their journey.