(Written by Jonathan)

We met in 2016 at Caltech. Kathleen was a first year grad student and I was administrative staff in the same department. I connected really quickly with Kathleen and two of her good friends who were also first year grad students. We all started hanging out as a group, which largely consisted of going to see musicals, Marvel movies (when they were still good), and taking frequent trips up into the mountains.

As time went by, we began spending more and more time together just the two of us, but as friends only. Kathleen invited me on a trip to Lake Tahoe with her and her friends in July of 2017. In November, we went together to see Hamilton at the Hollywood Pantages. When we discovered a mutual love of The Adventures of Robin Hood (1938) starring Errol Flynn, we watched it together. This led to discussion of more movies we should watch together. This led, in turn, to the creation of a shared document with a three column table of movies that we wanted to watch with each other. Left column - Jonathan wants to watch; right column - Kathleen wants to watch; center column - we both want to watch. We went to concerts at the Hollywood Bowl and the Walt Disney Concert Hall. Kathleen would stop by my office at Caltech any time I brought my (now our) dog Shadow in to work with me. She'd stop by other times, too, but Shadow was the guaranteed draw.

After a while, it became pretty clear that there was a mutual attraction , but since we were working in the same department (when you're a Caltech grad student, school is much more "work" than "school") and had formed a really wonderful friendship, we were both a little hesitant to pursue anything. Eventually, we talked, confirmed that the feelings were mutual, and began a romantic relationship. That was May 2018.

We continued to do all the things together - musicals, movies, mountains (the three M's, if you will). At some point we took a ballroom dance class together. We took more trips. We met parents (one another's, not just random parents). We met siblings. We started the lifelong dance of figuring out where we would spend holidays.

In February of 2020 (Valentine's Day, amusingly enough) we moved in together. Less than a month later, the W.H.O. declared a global pandemic and the state of California issued lockdown orders. We would find out very quickly that we were, in fact, domestically compatible (phew!). Thankfully, we had an outdoor pool at our apartment complex and two good friends, Nate and Sarah, living in the same complex. We met them at the pool frequently, and managed to stay relatively psychologically resilient as a result.

In May of 2021, Kathleen defended her dissertation and started the job hunt. In June, she was offered a postdoc position at the Center for Global Sustainability at the University of Maryland in College Park. In July, we packed up and started across the country to begin the next phase of life together. We've been living in Silver Spring, Maryland since August 2021.

In April of 2023, I asked Kathleen to marry me. I had some plans to make it special, but I made the mistake of getting the ring in February with plans to propose outdoors. After two months of waiting for the weather to get warm, I simply got tired of not being engaged. I went to the other room and got the ring out of my safe. I took a few moments to breathe deeply and listen for any parts of myself that were unsure that this was what I wanted to do. There were no such parts. I went out to the living room and asked Kathleen if I could ask her a question...