Tobius and Madilyne met in 2020 when she was just 18 and he was 19 years old. They were both music students at Grand Rapids Community College at the time.

Tobius noticed Madilyne initially but at first was too nervous to strike up a conversation.
Instead, he found excuses to approach her in a group and only talked with her about homework assignments.

Eventually, this grew into a friendship and they exchanged their dreams and goals of becoming professional musicians. However, Tobius knew that he was interested in more than just platonic friendship with Madilyne.

Still too afraid to directly ask for her phone number, he asked her to text him the Zoom link for one of their virtual classes together. Using that phone number from the text message, Tobius called Madilyne later that day and asked her if she would like to hang out with him "as friends".

Madilyne liked Tobius and already considered him a close friend so happily accepted. They made plans to meet outside of school for the first time.

The night prior to the planned hangout, Tobius summoned the courage to ask Madilyne a question that he had thought about since they first met: would she be open to calling this an official "date"?

This was during the Spring of 2021, and at this point Madilyne had recently been on several disappointing dates and was getting a lot of unwanted attention from her male coworkers. She was also working overtime on her studies and didn't have much spare time to consider entering a relationship. Because of this, she reluctantly said "no".

Rather than this discouraging Tobius, he asked Madilyne to still hang out with him like they planned, secretly hoping that she would reconsider. She agreed to go out as friends.

The following day, he picked her up at her parent's house after school driving his dad's sports car. They went shopping at the mall and out to dinner afterwards.

However, once they got back in the car, neither of them wanted to go home. They talked and talked as the hours passed and the sun went down. They both exchanged information about their childhoods, families, and eventually found that they were holding hands.

Though neither of them wanted it to end, they honored the curfew set by Madilyne's parents and Tobius had her home by midnight.

Madilyne went home that night and tried to convince everyone (and herself) that it was not a real "date". But there was one thing she just couldn't ignore: she had never been so sorry to say "goodbye" to anyone in her life.

The next day, Madilyne resolved to admit something she rarely had done: that she was wrong. She called Tobius and, blushing furiously, asked if she could change her answer to "yes".

They become a couple soon after and were very happy together. They said "I love you" at five months and Tobius proposed at two years and ten months into their relationship.

By the wedding day, they will have had four wonderful years together, and an entire lifetime ahead. 💍