(Written By Molly)

In 2013, Kyle and I met in college at Southern Illinois University, Carbondale. I was a freshman and Kyle was a sophomore. We had mutual friends in college, and had met a few times at parties and around campus.

In 2014, My sophomore year came around. One night, my roommate and I were trying to get people to come out with us. Going through my contacts, I randomly reached out to Kyle in my phone book. Kyle's roommate and best friend, Ruben, reached out to me that night telling me Kyle was interested in getting to know me. Kyle and I then started talking and hanging out more, and he asked me to be his girlfriend. The night he originally asked me to be his girlfriend we were watching a movie, and I pretended I didn't hear him because I was so nervous (lol). He re-asked me a few days later, and we have been together ever since.

Kyle graduated a little over a year before I did. He then moved back to Chicago making us long distance. I moved back to Chicago a year and a half later, and we discussed what our next plans were now that we were both back in our hometowns of Chicagoland. Kyle asked me to move in together when his lease was up, and of course I was thrilled to. Next step was finding out where we wanted to live.

We researched places around the areas of both our families, but we didn't find an area around both our families that we would love to live. We then discussed possibly moving out of state. Kyle mentioned California, but we both knew that was unrealistic prices and distance from family for us. I mentioned Nashville, TN as I love country music and had just visited there recently. I never in a million years thought Kyle would agree to it. When I mentioned Nashville to him, Kyle was all for it and said he could see himself living there. We both wanted to be out of state, but still not too far from Illinois and our families so this was the perfect distance. We then made the decision; we were moving to Nashville! We went down to look at places to rent and moved a few months later. We got an apartment just outside of downtown Nashville that we loved and lived there 2 years. I never in my wildest dreams would think we would have moved out of state and be living in Nashville away from our families.

A few months after moving to Nashville we went to “look” at dogs. We ended up falling in love with a skittish yellow lab named "Yiye." He was the dog at the shelter that everyone passed by, because he was afraid of everything. We knew that we wanted to give him the best home, so we adopted "Yiye." He then became our sweet "Buddy" Boy. He has gained so much confidence over the last 2 year of having him, and we couldn’t imagine our lives without him.

Then, A little over a year into living in Nashville; Kyle proposed on the Nashville Pedestrian bridge. It was the most perfect day! (Read our Proposal :) )

We then decided a few months later we wanted to buy a house, and put down roots in Nashville. We decided on a new built community and built our first house together! It was such a fun process. Watching it build from the ground up is something I never thought we'd get to do, especially with our first home! We moved into our new house in April 2021, and have been loving working on house projects together.

The past 7 years together has been filled with adventures, love, & excitement. We can’t wait for what the future holds, and have loved every minute of this life we created together. July 3rd can't come soon enough!