One day in February of 2020, during my sophomore year, I met a girl named MacKenzie at the UGA Bolton dining hall. I'd seen her around and we had a lot of mutual friends, but we'd never officially met. MacKenzie was really intelligent, had a very quirky personality, and was really easy to talk to!

I remember thinking she was cute and wondering if we would be a good fit for each other, but at the time I didn't end up thinking we'd be a good fit.

Flash forward a month and COVID hits the US, causing us to have classes canceled for 2 weeks (and then the rest of the semester). MacKenzie and I didn't see each other for about a year after that, with us quarantining in separate places and not knowing each other well. We still kept up with each other on social media!

My senior year of college, 21'/22', I worked under MacKenzie on the Wesley media team, where she would oversee my video projects. At this point we had a casual friendship but still didn't know each other super well.

Then the next school year, in fall 2022, I came on staff at Wesley with MacKenzie and now we were in the same role in the internship together. We worked together 4 days a week, were in the same co-ed small group, and MacKenzie also started coming to my church (the church where we are now getting married)!

While we were spending so much time together we began to really deeply connect and grow in our friendship. By the end of the fall semester 2022, I had fallen for MacKenzie - I absolutely loved talking to her every chance I could, deeply respected her, and thought she was really cute. I realized I was going to miss her so much that Christmas break.

I took that break to pray and talk to a few friends to make sure asking her out was a good idea, and then immediately when I got back in January 2023, I asked her on a date in the St James parking lot after church. Not only did she excitedly and nervously say yes, but she thanked me for asking her which was so sweet.

6 months into our relationship, MacKenzie was promoted to a director position at Wesley, making her my boss for part of my job...

While it was a challenging dynamic, it actually pushed MacKenzie and I to grow even more in our communication and teamwork, and has led us to be even stronger as a couple. We've had so much fun working at Wesley together and are blessed to have an amazing community there.

After a year and a half of dating, I asked MacKenzie to marry me on July 20th, 2024. She obviously said yes. :)

M&J