Liz and Matt met on a cold January night in the mountain town of Driggs, Idaho, population 1,805. They chatted a little bit over dinner while sitting alongside a mingling group of ski instructors and staff during some training events for the company they both worked for. Liz rolled her eyes as she interpreted Matt's friendliness as flirting. Over the following year+ eye witnesses would describe them as "loose acquaintances" with infrequent encounters that were never at the right time in either of their lives until they met again on the fringes of Tucson, Arizona in the Sonoran desert. Liz describes the moment she walked in the door and saw Matt across the room as a realization of "oh yea, there's that guy... that I want to be with... forever" and Matt tactfully positioned himself within talking distance in an attempt at swooning Liz. They made loose climbing plans for the summer and exchanged phone numbers as Matt left to return home to Washington and Liz to Wyoming.

Over the following weeks text messages turned into phone calls which turned into video calls as they became more interested in each other and decided to start dating while living a 1,000+ mile drive apart. Before Zoom meetings were cool, these two figured out how to even watch episodes of Game of Thrones together while dating long distance. Liz flew to visit Matt in Washington, Matt flew to meet up with Liz for a camping trip in Utah, they got tired of not seeing each other more and Liz decided to leave her job to move to Washington so they could live together.

Throughout the following couple years, Liz and Matt climbed mountains, started grad school, moved several times, lived through a global pandemic, took many neighborhood walks, fostered a handful of cattle dogs (and adopted one of them), and ate 3,000 frozen pizzas.

Matt proposed to Liz on April 24, 2020 on the rocky shore of Carkeek park in Seattle , and Liz proposed to Matt by alpine Lake Margaret on July 20, 2020. Both said yes!