Kelsey & Robert first met on the dating app Hinge, which includes different prompts to spur conversation. Kelsey responded to one of Robert's prompts, Robert invited Kelsey to start the chat, and their love story began!

Immediately after their initial messages, Kelsey went on a vacation with her parents. Robert was nervous Kelsey would lose interest after returning, but little did he know that she was thinking about him the entire trip. Robert wanted to have a coffee date on the Monday after she returned but discovered that his favorite coffee shops were closed during their date; instead, they met at Urban Teahouse which was new to them both. For over two hours, they talked about their jobs and families, discussed at length Robert's love for flags, and learned that Robert had lived in Longview (where Kelsey's parents lived) and that one of Kelsey’s coworkers lived in Winfield. True to their personalities, Kelsey sent this message to her friend Hope after the date, while Robert told his brother that the date went “as well as it possibly could have.”

After their first date, they wasted no time scheduling a second one! Over the next two months, Robert and Kelsey were frequently out of town, so their early dates were quite spaced out; however, when they got together, they made the time count! They had some typical early dates such as miniature golfing, playing board games, and cooking for each other, but also had some unique ones, like looking up each other's hometowns on Google StreetView and driving to look at a pipeline Robert was designing (yes, they went to look at a hole in the ground on their third date). On November 23rd, after their date at OKC's Lights on Broadway (where they took their first picture together), Robert asked Kelsey to be his girlfriend!

Over the next few months, their budding relationship saw many major milestones: Robert met most of Kelsey's best friends at her birthday party in December, she met his siblings on New Year's Day, they met both sets of parents in February, and they celebrated their first Valentine's together. (In his first romantic blunder, Robert suggested cooking an intimate dinner at his apartment instead of eating out, not realizing it’d be over a year before they would again eat at a restaurant.) However, none of these milestones were as significant as Robert's birthday present, where Kelsey gave him basketball tickets and he, in turn, introduced her to her new life as a Baylor Bear.

One fateful evening, Robert and Kelsey were out for a walk through downtown and noticed Thunder fans were streaming out of the basketball arena just after tipoff. They soon discovered that the inevitable had happened, COVID-19 had reached Oklahoma, and the next day the world shut down. They found themselves getting to know each other in unexpected ways; for many months, nights out became exclusively nights in, and puzzles, baking, neighborhood walks, and Zoom hangouts became date night activities. Life was weird and scary and lonely and unpredictable, but through it all Robert and Kelsey found strength and support in each other.

One year after their first date, Robert and Kelsey celebrated their first anniversary by returning to where it all began at Urban Teahouse! They could now admit to each other that neither of them loved tea, but luckily they loved each other.