On Christmas Eve in 2020, Kaitlin and her parents decided to try and make a new tradition to go to Little Alley Steakhouse for dinner to celebrate the holiday. Unfortunately, they did not have a reservation and decided to go early when it opened to see if they could get lucky and find a table. Little did they know, Little Alley is an extremely popular Christmas Eve dinner spot and they were completely booked for the night. After a quick deliberation they decided they would sit and have dinner at the nearly empty bar instead.

Meanwhile... Ayoub had recently moved to Atlanta from Florida and had just locked down his Roswell apartment and was getting comfortable in his new job at Little Alley Steakhouse (you can probably see where this is going). After learning the ropes of the restaurant as a server and building a good reputation for himself, he got the opportunity to try his hand at bartending and was asked to bartend for the first time on Christmas Eve night. And so, in a culmination of unlikely yet fateful events, Kaitlin and Ayoub met for the first time when Ayoub introduced himself as their bartender for the night. Needless to say, the meal and company that followed was life-changing for all of them.

After a sly exchange of information at dinner, Kaitlin and Ayoub connected the next day (Christmas morning) and began to get to know each other better over text. After a few weeks of talking they decided to finally meet for dinner. Kaitlin was in the process of moving back to Atlanta from DC and did not have access to a car. So Ayoub, the gentleman that he is, called her a car to take her 35 minutes from her house in Forsyth to his favorite sushi restaurant in Roswell. After that, the rest is history!