During my junior year of high school, I spent a lot of time dancing and performing for the Theatre of the Republic. During one of the shows I met Andrew through a mutual friend. We said 'hello' in passing whenever he would visit but that was it. Fast forward to the summer before my sophomore year of college, one of my friends at the time announced they were leaving school to pursue a military career. I didn't want to lose contact but I wasn't sure how to maintain that line of communication during boot camp. I was scrolling through Instagram when Andrew appeared on my screen. I recognized him immediately him and sent him a message asking for advice. He was so polite and helpful. Answering all of my questions about communication and ways to make that transition easy on my friend. The conversation about advice eventually turned into a game of "20 questions". The game of "20 questions" turned into phone calls, Facetimes, and texts. I found myself counting down the hours and minutes until our next phone call or Facetime. My heart dancing whenever I saw his name appear on my screen. Before I knew it, he was asking me to be his girlfriend.

Our relationship has always been long distance, but that makes the time together much more special. We took a chance on each other. We spent most of our time apart but I knew he was special when he accepted me for who I was and fought for our chance of love. It was a new feeling, it was hard and scary but the distance was a test to see how far our love would travel. No matter the distance, I knew Andrew would always be there. Andrew became my rock and my best friend. He makes me smile and laugh until my cheeks hurt. He puts up with my silly jokes and calms down when I feel overwhelmed. He's given me unconditional love and I am so grateful to have him in my life. I can't wait to be his wife and start writing the next chapter together.

My first recollection of meeting Madison would have been when she reached out over Instagram in regarding how to write letters to several of her friends who were going to Boot camp. After overcoming my rather significant paranoia on the matter of a gorgeous blonde reaching out to me on a topic I love to talk about (shortly after having moved into the intel field). I offered all the advice I could on the matter since it sucks to not get letters while going through training. This turned into chatting, 20-questions, and eventually video calls. Once we decided the chances of one of us being a serial killer was slim to none our first date was a hike up Crowder's Mountain...there was a good amount of trust built by then!