George and Nancy both grew up in Pittsburg, KS. They went to George Nettels Elementary School at the same time (although in different grades).

Nancy sometimes played the piano at Pittsburg's First Christian Church; this is where George remembers first noticing her.

Nancy and George shared their first kiss at a church lock-in on May 13, 1988, then dated throughout that summer.

After George graduated from PHS, they fell out of touch, although they kept track of each other occasionally through mutual friends and Facebook.

While George's flying career took him all over the country, Nancy went to college in Iowa, and then Oklahoma; turns out the two of us lived just hours apart for awhile during each of those periods!

Nancy established her optometry career in Oregon. In 2015, she visited her parents in their new hometown of St Louis, near where George was living at the time. After a flurry of Facebook messages, we saw each other for the first time in more than 20 years!

Over time, our newly rekindled friendship turned into long-distance romance. When George took a job with ATI in 2019, he was able to choose his home base, and he chose Oregon! (Mt Hood in the background)

During a birthday trip to Hawaii, a lot of our friends thought we had eloped! This photo is jokingly known as "our first wedding picture."

For Nancy's 50th birthday, George took her on an Alaskan adventure: We rode the Alaska Railroad past Denali, soaked in Chena Hot Springs in the snow, flew over the Brooks Mountains into the Arctic Circle in a Cessna Caravan, and stayed at the northern-most point of the United States: Barrow, AK...

There, under a spectacular northern lights show on edge of the Arctic Ocean, Nancy told George she was finally ready to get married.

We decided to come back to our hometown to celebrate our wedding; we've lived and travelled all over the country, but Pittsburg is where it all started for us. (First Christian Church, where we shared our first kiss 36 years ago, in the background)