Our story started online in June 2023 with 2,500+ miles between us (Morgan in Europe on vacation and Tristan at home in Florida.) We met on Snapchat and just immediately clicked, chatting throughout my trip and learning more and more about each other - starting the slide from friends into more. After a brutal 17-hour flight back to the U.S., I was absolutely travel-worn and waiting through a final horrible layover at DFW when Tristan said “I love you” for the first time. Not exactly glamorous, but very on brand for us!

The first time we met in person was in July 2023, when Tristan flew from West Palm Beach to Idaho Falls to visit me. IT WAS LOVE AT FIRST SIGHT! Never an awkward moment, we spent an amazing week together. By the time Tristan was leaving, we knew that seeing each other every other month would not be enough. Because Tristan’s school was in-person and mine online, we made a plan for me to move to West Palm Beach where we could be together. In late October, just before my 19th birthday, Tristan flew back to Idaho Falls to help me pack my stuff, and we drove 35 hours across the country to South Florida. It was exhausting, exciting, chaotic, and somehow the happiest either of us had ever been. That drive marked the moment when “home” stopped being a place and started being each other.

We spent the next 18 months learning how to be independent and competent adults while building a life together. Some of those lessons were very hard, we did not get everything right on the first try, and circumstances briefly pulled us both back to our families and away from each other. We realized we both had a lot to learn about being a good partner to the other, but even when we were again living in different states our feelings for one another never changed. So we committed to honest self-reflection and improvement, and we worked on our communication skills. We talked about all of our expectations and hopes for ourselves and each other. We visited often, stayed constantly connected, and kept on choosing each other every single day.

On September 22, 2025, Tristan proposed at a beautiful waterfall near my family’s new home in Pennsylvania. (Okay, so it turned out to be more of a dribble than a waterfall, but it was perfect anyway!) It was magical, unforgettable, and of course, my answer was yes.

Another cross-country move! Just after Christmas, Tristan and I loaded up all my stuff and hauled it to our new place in Sanford, Florida, where our life together truly began. Since then, dreams have turned into reality: he landed his dream job as a highly-trained mechanic and certified welder working on classic cars, and I graduated and started my dream job working with infants as a daycare teacher! We’ve made a home with our three cats in a cozy little apartment that is perfectly ours.

And that’s our story! We are living proof that true love can survive distance, timing, our own emotional growing pains, thousands of hours on FaceTime, and even disappointing waterfalls.